Peeps through the moss that clothes the hawthorn

root,

Deceive no student. Wisdom there, and truth,

Not shy, as in the world, and to be won

By slow solicitation, seize at once

The roving thought, and fix it on themselves.

What prodigies can pow'r divine perform
More grand than it produces year by year,
And all in sight of inattentive man?

Familiar with th' effect we slight the cause,
And, in the constancy of nature's course,
The regular return of genial months,

And renovation of a faded world,

See nought to wonder at. Should God again,

As once in Gibeon, interrupt the race

Of the undeviating and punctual sun,

How would the world admire! but speaks it less An agency divine, to make him know

His moment when to sink and when to rise,

Age after age, than to arrest his course?

All we behold is miracle; but, seen

So duly, all is miracle in vain.

Where now the vital energy that mov'd,

While summer was, the pure and subtile lymph Through th' imperceptible meand'ring veins

Of leaf and flow'r? It sleeps; and th' icy touch Of unprolific winter has impress'd

A cold stagnation on th' intestine tide.

But let the months go round, a few short months,
And all shall be restor'd. These naked shoots,
Barren as lances, among which the wind
Makes wintry music, sighing as it goes,

Shall put their graceful foliage on again,

And, more aspiring, and with ampler spread,

Shall boast new charms, and more than they have

lost.

Then, each in its peculiar honours clad,

Shall publish, even to the distant

eye,

Its family and tribe. Labernum, rich

In streaming gold; syringa, iv'ry pure;
The scentless and the scented rose; this red

i

And of an humbler growth, the other tall,
And throwing up into the darkest gloom
Of neighb'ring cypress, or more sable yew,
Her silver globes, light as the foamy surf
That the wind severs from the broken wave;
The lilac, various in array, now white,

Now sanguine, and her beauteous head now set
With purple spikes pyramidal, as if,

Studious of ornament, yet unresolv'd

Which hue she most approv'd, she chose them all;
Copious of flow'rs the woodbine, pale and wan,
But well compensating her sickly looks
With never-cloying odours, early and late;
Hypericum, all bloom, so thick a swarm

Of flow'rs, like flies clothing her slender rods,
That scarce a leaf appears; mezerion, too,
Though leafless, well attir'd, and thick beset

i The Guelder-rose.