Dost thou revel in the rosy morning,
When all nature hails the Lord of light,
And his smile, the mountain-tops adorning,
Robes yon fragrant fields in radiance bright?
Other hands may grasp the field and forest,
Proud proprietors in pomp may shine;
But with fervent love if thou adorest,
Thou art wealthier,
Yet if through earth's wide domains thou rovest,
Sighing that they are not thine alone,
Not those fair fields, but thyself, thou lovest,
And their beauty and thy wealth is gone.
Nature wears the colors of the spirit,
Sweetly to her worshipper she sings,
All the glow, the grace, she doth inherit,
Round her trusting child she fondly flings.
THE fleet astronomer can bore
And thread the spheres with his quick-piercing mind. He views their stations; walks from door to door; Surveys, as if he had designed
To make a purchase there.
And knoweth, long before,
Both their full-eyed aspects and secret glances.
The nimble diver with his side
Cuts through the working waves, that he may fetch His dearly earnèd pearl, which God did hide
On purpose from the venturous wretch,
That he might save his life, and also her's
Who, with excessive pride,
Her own destruction and his danger wears.
The subtle chymic can divest
And strip the creature naked, till he find
The callow principles within their nest.
There he imparts to them his mind,
Admitted to their bed-chamber, before
They appear trim and dressed
To ordinary suitors at the door.
What hath not man sought out and found, But his dear God? who yet his glorious law Embosoms in us, mellowing the ground
With showers and frosts, with love and awe; So that we need not say, "Where's this command?" Poor man! thou searchest round To find out death, but missest life at hand.
As I stood thus, a neighbouring wood of elms
Was moved, and stirred, and whispered loftily,
Much like a pomp of warriors with plumed helms,
When some great general, whom they long to see,
Is heard behind them, coming in swift dignity;
And then there fled by me a rush of air,
That stirred up all the other foliage there,
Filling the solitude with panting tongues;
At which the pines woke up into their songs,
Shaking their choral locks; and on the place
There fell a shade, as on an awe-struck face;
And overhead, like a portentous rim
Pulled over the wide world, to make all dim,
A grave, gigantic cloud came hugely uplifting him.
It passed with its slow shadow; and I saw
Where it went down beyond me on a plain,
Sloping its dusky ladders of thick rain;
And on the mist it made, and blinding awe,
The sun, reissuing in the opposite sky,
Struck the all-colored arch of his great eye,
And the disburdened country laughed again;
The leaves were amber; the sunshine
Scored on the ground its conquering line;
And the quick birds, for scorn of the great cloud,
Like children after fear, were merry and loud.
THE DRYADS. — Leigh Hunt.
THESE are the tawny Dryads, who love nooks
In the dry depth of oaks;
Or feel the air in groves, or pull green dresses
For their glad heads in rooty wildernesses;
Or on the gold turf, o'er the dark lines
Which the sun makes when he declines,
Bend their linked dances in and out the pines.
They tend all forests old, and meeting trees,
Wood, copse, or queach, or slippery dell o'erhung
With firs, and with their dusty apples strewn;
And let the visiting beams the boughs among,
And bless the trunks from clingings of disease
And wasted hearts that to the night-wind groan.
They screen the cuckoo when he sings; and teach The mother blackbird how to lead astray
The unformed spirit of the foolish boy
From thick to thick, from hedge to bay or beach,
When he would steal the huddled nest away
Of yellow bills upgaping for their food,
And spoil the song of the free solitude.
And they, at sound of the brute, insolent horn,
Hurry the deer out of the dewy morn;
And take into their sudden laps with joy
The startled hare that did but peep abroad;
And from the trodden road
Help the bruised hedgehog. And at rest, they love
The back-turned pheasant, hanging from the tree
His sunny drapery ;
And handy squirrel, nibbling hastily;
And fragrant hiving bee,
So happy that he will not move, not he,
Without a song; and hidden, loving dove,
With his deep breath; and bird of wakeful glen,
Whose louder song is like the voice of life,
Triumphant o'er death's image, but whose deep,
Low, lovelier note is like a gentle wife,
A poor, a pensive, yet a happy one,
Stealing, when daylight's common tasks are done,
An hour for mother's work, and singing low
While her tired husband and her children sleep.
My God, I heard this day,
That none doth build a stately habitation,
But he that means to dwell therein.
What house more stately hath there been,
Or can be, than is Man? to whose creation
All things are in decay.
For Man is every thing,
And more. He is a tree, yet bears no fruit;
A beast, yet is, or should be, more.
Reason and speech we only bring.
Parrots may thank us, if they are not mute;
They go upon the score.
Man is all symmetry,
Full of proportions, one limb to another,
And all to all the world besides.
Each part may call the farthest brother:
For head with foot hath private amity;
And both with moons and tides.
Nothing hath got so far,
But Man hath caught and kept it, as his
His eyes dismount the highest star;
He is, in little, all the sphere.
Herbs gladly cure our flesh, because that they
Find their acquaintance there.
For us the winds do blow,
The earth doth rest, heaven move, and fountains flow.
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