The uninformed and heedless souls of men.
We give to chance, blind chance, ourselves as blind,
The glory of thy work; which yet appears
Perfect and unimpeachable of blame,
Challenging human scrutiny, and proved
Then skilful most when most severely judged.

But chance is not; or is not where Thou reign'st:
Thy Providence forbids that fickle power
(If power she be, that works but to confound)
To mix her wild vagaries with thy laws.

ENSLAVED BY GODS WE DOTE ON, ONLY BY RECEIVING THE TRUE GOD, AND KEEPING HIS PRECEPTS,' CAN WE WALK AT LIBERTY.'

Yet thus we dote, refusing while we can Instruction, and inventing to ourselves Gods such as guilt makes welcome; gods that sleep, Or disregard our follies, or that sit Amused spectators of this bustling stage. Thee we reject, unable to abide

Thy purity, till pure as Thou art pure,

Made such by Thee, we love Thee for that cause,
For which we shunned and hated Thee before.
Then we are free. Then liberty, like day,
Breaks on the soul, and by a flash from heaven
Fires all the faculties with glorious joy.

A voice is heard, that mortal ears hear not,
Till Thou hast touched them; 't is the voice of song,
A loud Hosanna sent from all thy works;
Which he that hears it with a shout repeats,
And adds his rapture to the general praise.

In that blest moment Nature, throwing wide Her veil opaque, discloses with a smile The Author of her beauties, who, retired Behind his own creation, works unseen By the impure, and hears his power denied. Thou art the source and centre of all minds, Their only point of rest, eternal Word! From Thee departing they are lost, and rove At random without honor, hope, or peace. From Thee is all that soothes the life of man. His high endeavor, and his glad success, His strength to suffer, and his will to serve. But, 0, Thou bounteous Giver of all good, Thou art of all thy gifts Thyself the crown! Give what Thou canst, without Thee we are poor; And with Thee rich, take what Thou wilt away.

1 Compare Wordsworth:

'Nature never did betray
The heart that loved her; 't is her privilege,
Through all the years of this our life, to lead
From joy to joy; for she can so inform
The mind that is within us, so impress
With quietness and beauty, and so feed
With lofty thoughts, that neither evil tongues,
Rash judgments, nor the sneers of selfish men,
Nor greetings where no kindness is, nor all
The dreary intercourse of daily life,
Shall e'er prevail against us, or disturb
Our cheerful faith that all which we behold
Is full of blessings.'

"WINTER WALK AT NOON."

ARGUMENT.

Bells at a distance. Their effect. A fine noon in winter. A sheltered walk. Meditation better than books. Our familiarity with the course of nature makes it appear less wonderful than it is. The transformation that Spring effects in a shrubbery described. A mistake concerning the course of nature corrected. God maintains it by an unremitted act. The amusements fashionable at this hour of the day reproved. Animals happy, a delightful sight. Origin of cruelty to animals. That it is a great crime proved from Scripture. That proof illustrated by a tale. A line drawn between the lawful and unlawful destruction of them. Their good and useful properties insisted on. Apology for the encomiums bestowed by the author on animals. Instances of man's extravagant praise of man. The groans of the creation shall have an end. A view taken of the restoration of all things. An invocation and an invitation of Him who shall bring it to pass. The retired man vindicated from the charge of uselessness. Conclusion.

MUSIC AND THE HEART.—THE VILLAGE BELLS.

THERE is in souls a sympathy with sounds, And as the mind is pitched the ear is pleased With melting airs or martial, brisk or grave; Some chord in unison with what we hear Is touched within us, and the heart replies. How soft the music of those village bells, Falling at intervals upon the ear In cadence sweet, now dying all away, Now pealing loud again, and louder still, Clear and sonorous, as the gale comes on! With easy force it opens all the cells Where memory slept. Wherever I have heard A kindred melody, the scene recurs,

And with it all its pleasures and its pains.

RETROSPECTION; EXCITED BY SOME SOUND OR MELODY.

Such comprehensive views the spirit takes,
That in a few short moments I retrace

(As in a map the voyager his course)
The windings of my way through many years.
Short as in retrospect the journey seems,
It seemed not always short; the rugged path,
And prospect oft so dreary and forlorn,
Moved many a sigh at its disheartening length.
Yet feeling present evils, while the past
Faintly impress the mind, or not at all,
How readily we wish time spent revoked,
That we might try the ground again, where once
(Through inexperience, as we now perceive)
We missed that happiness we might have found!

PRESENT BLESSINGS NOT ENOUGH APPRECIATED. A FATHER'S
COUNSELS; A MOTHER'S LOVE.

Some friend is gone, perhaps his son's best friend, A father, whose authority, in show When most severe, and mustering all its force, Was but the graver countenance of love; Whose favor, like the clouds of spring, might lower, And utter now and then an awful voice, But had a blessing in its darkest frown, Threatening at once and nourishing the plant. We loved, but not enough, the gentle hand That reared us. At a thoughtless age, allured

By every gilded folly, we renounced
His sheltering side, and wilfully forewent
That converse, which we now in vain regret.
How gladly would the man recall to life
The boy's neglected sire! a mother too,
That softer friend, perhaps more gladly still,
Might he demand them at the gates of death.
Sorrow has, since they went, subdued and tamed
The playful humor; he could now endure
(Himself grown sober in the vale of tears),
And feel a parent's presence no restraint.
But not to understand a treasure's worth,
Till time has stolen away the slighted good,
Is cause of half the poverty we feel,
And makes the world the wilderness it is.
The few that pray at all pray oft amiss,

And, seeking grace to improve the prize they hold,
Would urge a wiser suit than asking more.

THE BRILLIANT WINTER NOON.

The night was winter in his roughest mood; The morning sharp and clear. But now at noon, Upon the southern side of the slant hills, And where the woods fence off the northern blast, The season smiles, resigning all its rage, And has the warmth of May. The vault is blue Without a cloud, and white without a speck The dazzling splendor of the scene below.

THE BELFRY-TOWER AND ITS MUSIC. THE EMBOWERED PATH. MUSINGS.

Again the harmony comes o'er the vale;
And through the trees I view the embattled tower,
Whence all the music. I again perceive
The soothing influence of the wafted strains,
And settle in soft musings as I tread

The walk, still verdant, under oaks and elms,
Whose outspread branches overarch the glade.
The roof, though movable through all its length
As the wind sways it, has yet well sufficed,
And, intercepting in their silent fall

The frequent flakes, has kept a path for me.
No noise is here, or none that hinders thought.

THE ROBIN IN WINTER; TINKLING ICEDROPS.
The redbreast warbles still, but is content
With slender notes, and more than half suppressed;
Pleased with his solitude, and flitting light
From spray to spray, where'er he rests he shakes
From many a twig the pendent drops of ice,
That tinkle in the withered leaves below.
Stillness, accompanied with sounds so soft,
Charms more than silence.

MEDITATION.DIFFERENCE BETWEEN KNOWLEDGE AND WIS

DOM.

Meditation here

May think down hours to moments. Here the heart
May give a useful lesson to the head,
And learning wiser grow without his books.
Knowledge and Wisdom, far from being one,
Have ofttimes no connection. Knowledge dwells
In heads replete with thoughts of other men ;

Wisdom, in minds attentive to their own. Knowledge, a rude unprofitable mass,

The mere materials with which Wisdom builds, Till smoothed, and squared, and fitted to its place, Does but encumber whom it seems to enrich. Knowledge is proud that he has learned so much; Wisdom is humble that he knows no more.

ABUSES OF BOOK-READING.

Books are not seldom talismans and spells, By which the magic art of shrewder wits Holds an unthinking multitude enthralled. Some to the fascination of a name

Surrender judgment, hoodwinked. Some the style
Infatuates, and through labyrinths and wilds

Of error leads them, by a tune entranced.
While sloth seduces more, too weak to bear

The insupportable fatigue of thought,

And swallowing therefore, without pause or choice, The total grist unsifted, husks and all.

THE BOOK OF NATURE EXCITES, NOT SMOTHERS THOUGHT.

But trees and rivulets, whose rapid course Defies the check of Winter, haunts of deer, And sheep-walks populous with bleating lambs, And lanes in which the primrose ere her time 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.

WONDERS OF NATURE. WHY UNFelt.

What prodigies can Power Divine perform More grand than it produces year by yearAnd all in sight of inattentive man? Familiar with the 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 naught 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.

THE SLEEP OF THE VEGETABLE WORLD; ITS AWAKING.
Where now the vital energy that moved,
While Summer was, the pure and subtle lymph
Through the imperceptible meandering veins
Of leaf and flower? It sleeps; and the icy touch
Of unprolific Winter has impressed

A cold stagnation on the intestine tide.
But let the months go round, a few short months,
And all shall be restored. 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, [lost.
Shall boast new charms, and more than they have
Then each, in its peculiar honors clad,
Shall publish even to the distant eye
Its family and tribe.

SHRUBBERY REVIVED. THE LABURNUM; SYRINGA; ROSE;
CYPRESS; YEW; LILAC.

Laburnum, rich

In streaming gold; syringa, ivory pure;
The scentless and the scented rose; this red,
And of an humbler growth, the other1 tall,
And throwing up into the darkest gloom
Of neighboring 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 unresolved
Which hue she most approved, she chose them all;

SHRUBBERY; THE WOODBINE; HYPERICUM; MEZEREON;
ALTHEA; BROOM; JASMINE.

Copious of flowers, the woodbine, pale and wan,
But well compensating her sickly looks
With never-cloying odors, early and late;
Hypericum all bloom, so thick a swarm

Of flowers, like flies, clothing her slender rods,
That scarce a leaf appears; mezereon too,
Though leafless, well attired, and thick beset
With blushing wreaths, investing every spray;
Althea with the purple eye; the broom,
Yellow and bright, as bullion unalloyed,
Her blossoms; and, luxuriant above all,
The jasmine, throwing wide her elegant sweets,
The deep dark green of whose unvarnished leaf
Makes more conspicuous, and illumines more
The bright profusion of her scattered stars.

PERPETUAL SUCCESSION OF DEATH AND LIFE. THE SOUL OF
ALL.

These have been, and these shall be in their day;
And all this uniform, uncolored scene
Shall be dismantled of its fleecy load,
And flush into variety again.

From dearth to plenty, and from death to life,
Is Nature's progress, when she lectures man
In heavenly truth; evincing, as she makes
The grand transition, that there lives and works
A soul in all things, and that soul is God.

ALL LIFE IS FROM GOD; AND ALL THE PROVISIONS TO CON-
TINUE IT BUDS.

The beauties of the wilderness are His,
That makes so gay the solitary place,
Where no eye sees them. And the fairer forms
That cultivation glories in are his.
He sets the bright procession on its way,
And marshals all the order of the year;

He marks the bounds which Winter may not pass,
And blunts his pointed fury; in its case,
Russet and rude, folds up the tender germ,

1 The guelder-rose.

Uninjured, with inimitable art;

And, ere one flowery season fades and dies,
Designs the blooming wonders of the next.

THE WORLD NOT A MACHINE. PRESERVATION IS PERPETUAL
CREATION. — PRESUMPTION OF MAN. MATTER CANNOT
OBEY ANY MORE THAN IT CAN MAKE A LAW.

Some say that in the origin of things,
When all creation started into birth,
The infant elements received a law,

From which they swerve not since. That under force
Of that controlling ordinance they move,
And need not his immediate hand, Who first
Prescribed their course, to regulate it now.
Thus dream they, and contrive to save a God
The encumbrance of his own concerns, and spare
The great Artificer of all that moves
The stress of a continual act, the pain
Of unremitted vigilance and care,
As too laborious and severe a task.
So man,
the moth, is not afraid, it seems,
To span omnipotence, and measure might,
That knows no measure, by the scanty rule
And standard of his own, that is to-day,
And is not ere to-morrow's sun go down.
But how should matter occupy a charge,
Dull as it is, and satisfy a law
So vast in its demands, unless impelled
To ceaseless service by a ceaseless force,
And under pressure of some conscious cause?

GOD IS LIFE; CREATION IS RECIPIENT OF IT FROM HIM.—
NATURE, WHAT? THE SUN THE MEDIUM OF VEGETATIVE

LIFE IN PLANTS AND ANIMALS.

The Lord of all, Himself through all diffused,
Sustains, and is the life of all that lives.
Nature is but a name for an effect,
Whose cause is God. He feeds the sacred fire,
By which the mighty process is maintained,
Who sleeps not, is not weary; in whose sight
Slow circling ages are as transient days;
Whose work is without labor; whose designs
No flaw deforms, no difficulty thwarts;
And whose beneficence no charge exhausts.

IDOLATRY OF THE FABLED POWERS OF NATURE.

Him blind antiquity profaned, not served,
With self-taught rites, and under various names,
Female and male, Pomona, Pales, Pan,
And Flora, and Vertumnus; peopling earth
With tutelary goddesses and gods,

That were not; and commending as they would
To each some province, garden, field, or grove.
But all are under one.

CHRIST, THE GOD OF NATURE AND OF BEAUTY. — EFFECTS OF A SENSE OF HIS PRESENCE. PROOFS OF HIS CONSTANT LOVE.

One spirit - His

Who wore the platted thorns with bleeding brows-
Rules universal nature. Not a flower
But shows some touch, in freckle, streak, or stain,
Of his unrivalled pencil. He inspires
Their balmy odors, and imparts their hues,
And bathes their eyes with nectar, and includes,

In grains as countless as the sea-side sands,
The forms with which He sprinkles all the earth.
Happy who walks with Him! whom what he finds
Of flavor or of scent in fruit or flower,
Or what he views of beautiful or grand
In nature, from the broad majestic oak
To the green blade that twinkles in the sun,
Prompts with remembrance of a present God.
His presence, who made all so fair, perceived,
Makes all still fairer. As with Him no scene
Is dreary, so with Him all seasons please.
Though Winter had been none, had man been true,
And earth be punished for its tenant's sake,
Yet not in vengeance; as this smiling sky,
So soon succeeding such an angry night,
And these dissolving snows, and this clear stream
Recovering fast its liquid music, prove.

CHESS, BILLIARDS, SHOPPING, COMPARATIVELY HOW EMPTY!
Who, then, that has a mind well strung and tuned
To contemplation, and within his reach
A scene so friendly to his favorite task,
Would waste attention at the checkered board,
His host of wooden warriors to and fro
Marching and countermarching, with an eye
As fixed as marble, with a forehead ridged
And furrowed into storms, and with a hand
Trembling, as if eternity were hung
In balance on his conduct of a pin?
Nor envies he aught more their idle sport,
Who pant with application misapplied
To trivial toys, and, pushing ivory balls
Across a velvet level, feel a joy
Akin to rapture, when the bauble finds
Its destined goal, of difficult access.
Nor deems he wiser him, who gives his noon
To Miss, the mercer's plague, from shop to shop
Wandering, and littering with unfolded silks
The polished counter, and approving none,
Or promising with smiles to call again.

THE COXCOMB CONNOISSEUR.

Nor him, who by his vanity seduced, And soothed into a dream that he discerns The difference of a Guido from a daub, Frequents the crowded auction: stationed there As duly as the Langford of the show, With glass at eye, and catalogue in hand, And tongue accomplished in the fulsome cant And pedantry, that coxcombs learn with ease; Oft as the price-deciding hammer falls, He notes it in his book, then raps his box, Swears 't is a bargain, rails at his hard fate, That he has let it pass-but never bids.

THE POET'S SECLUDED WALK. VILLAGE CHILDREN GATHER-
ING KING-CUPS, DAISIES, AND WATER-CRESSES.
Here unmolested, through whatever sign
The sun proceeds, I wander. Neither mist,
Nor freezing sky, nor sultry, checking me,
Nor stranger, intermeddling with my joy.

Grown so familiar with her frequent guest,
Scarce shuns me; and the stock-dove, unalarmed,
Sits cooing in the pine-tree, nor suspends
His long love-ditty for my near approach.
Drawn from his refuge in some lonely elm,
That age or injury has hollowed deep,
Where, on his bed of wool and matted leaves,
He has outslept the winter, ventures forth
To frisk a while, and bask in the warm sun,
The squirrel, flippant, pert, and full of play;
He sees me, and at once, swift as a bird,
Ascends the neighboring beech; there whisks his
And perks his ears, and stamps, and cries aloud,
With all the prettiness of feigned alarm,
And anger insignificantly fierce.

[brush,

The very kine, that gambol at high noon,
The total herd receiving first from one,
That leads the dance, a summons to be gay,
Though wild their strange vagaries, and uncouth
Their efforts, yet resolved with one consent
To give such act and utterance as they may
To ecstasy too big to be suppressed;
These, and a thousand images of bliss,
With which kind Nature graces every scene,
Where cruel man defeats not her design,
Impart to the benevolent, who wish
All that are capable of pleasure pleased,
A far superior happiness to theirs,
The comfort of a reasonable joy.

MAN CROWNED THE MONARCH OF ANIMALS. HIS LAW THE LAW OF LOVE. — EDEN, ADAM, AND THE ANIMALS.

Man scarce had risen, obedient to his call Who formed him from the dust, his future grave, When he was crowned as never king was since. God set the diadem upon his head,

[heart, Every

But sin marred all; and the revolt of man,
That source of evils not exhausted yet,
Was punished with revolt of his from him.
Garden of God, how terrible the change
Thy groves and lawns then witnessed!
Each animal, of every name, conceived
A jealousy, and an instinctive fear,
And, conscious of some danger, either fled
Precipitate the loathed abode of man,
Or growled defiance in such angry sort,
As taught him too to tremble in his turn.
Thus harmony and family accord

Were driven from Paradise; and in that hour
The seeds of cruelty, that since have swelled
To such gigantic and enormous growth,
Were sown in human nature's fruitful soil.
Hence date the persecution and the pain
That man inflicts on all inferior kinds,
Regardless of their plaints.

DEATH AND CRUELTY CALLED 'SPORTING.' To make him sport, To gratify the frenzy of his wrath, Or his base gluttony, are causes good And just in his account, why bird and beast Should suffer torture, and the streams be dyed With blood of their inhabitants impaled. Earth groans beneath the burden of a war Waged with defenceless innocence, while he, Not satisfied to prey on all around, Adds ten-fold bitterness to death by pangs Needless, and first torments ere he devours.

REBELLIOUS HATRED OF BEASTS TO MAN. FREEDOM OF THE WILDERNESS. THE LION'S MAGNANIMITY.

Now happiest they that occupy the scenes The most remote from his abhorred resort, Whom once, as delegate of God on earth, They feared, and as his perfect image loved. The wilderness is theirs, with all its caves, Its hollow glens, its thickets, and its plains, Unvisited by man. There they are free,

And howl and roar as likes them, uncontrolled;
Nor ask his leave to slumber or to play.
Woe to the tyrant, if he dare intrude
Within the confines of their wild domain :
The lion tells him, 'I am monarch here;'
And if he spare him, spares him on the terms
Of royal mercy, and through generous scorn
To rend a victim trembling at his foot.

TYRANNY TO DEPENDENT ANIMALS; SPANIEL; OX; HORSE.

In measure, as by force of instinct drawn,
Or by necessity constrained, they live
Dependent upon man; those in his fields,
These at his crib, and some beneath his roof.
They prove too often at how dear a rate
He sells protection. Witness at his foot
The spaniel dying for some venial fault
Under dissection of the knotted scourge ;
Witness the patient ox, with stripes and yells
Driven to the slaughter, goaded, as he runs,
To madness; while the savage at his heels
Laughs at the frantic sufferer's fury, spent
Upon the guiltless passenger o'erthrown.
He too is witness, noblest of the train
That wait on man, the flight-performing horse;
With unsuspecting readiness he takes

His murderer on his back, and, pushed all day,
With bleeding sides and flanks, that heave for life,
To the far-distant goal, arrives and dies.

THE LAW SHOULD PREVENT CRUELTY TO ANIMALS.

So little mercy shows who needs so much! Does law, so jealous in the cause of man, Denounce no doom on the delinquent? None. He lives, and o'er his brimming beaker boasts (As if barbarity were high desert) The inglorious feat, and, clamorous in praise Of the poor brute, seems wisely to suppose The honors of his matchless horse his own. But many a crime, deemed innocent on earth, Is registered in heaven; and these no doubt Have each their record, with a curse annexed.

COMPASSION TO ANIMALS REQUIRED BY THE MOSAIC LAW. NOAH. FLESH-EATING ALLOWED, NOT CRUELTY.

Man may dismiss compassion from his heart, But God will never. When He charged the Jew To assist his foe's down-fallen beast to rise; And when the bush-exploring boy, that seized The young, to let the parent bird go free; Proved He not plainly that his meaner works Are yet his care, and have an interest all, All, in the universal Father's love? On Noah, and in him on all mankind, The charter was conferred, by which we hold The flesh of animals in fee, and claim O'er all we feed on power of life and death. But read the instrument, and mark it well: The oppression of a tyrannous control

Can find no warrant there. Feed, then, and yield