Breathe soft, whose spirit in your freshness Expiring, lays the warbling world asleep, breathes : Oh, talk of him in solitary glooms! Where, o'er the rock, the scarcely waving pine Fills the brown shade with a religious awe. And ye, whose bolder note is heard afar, Who shake the astonish'd world, lift high to heaven The impetuous song, and say from whom you rage. Sweetest of birds! sweet Philomela! charm The listening shades, and teach the night his praise. Ye, chief, for whom the whole creation smiles; At once the head, the heart, and tongue of all, Crown the great hymn! In swarming cities vast, Assembled men to the deep organ join His praise, ye brooks, attune; ye trembling The long-resounding voice, oft breaking rills; And let me catch it as I muse along. Ye headlong torrents, rapid and profound; Ye softer floods, that lead the humid maze Along the vale; and thou, majestic main, A secret world of wonders in thyself; Sound his stupendous praise; whose greater voice Or bids you roar, or bids your roarings fall. Soft roll your incense, herbs, and fruits, and flowers, In mingled clouds to him, whose sun exalts, Whose breath perfumes you, and whose pen cil paints. Ye forests, bend, ye harvests, wave to him; While cloud to cloud returns the solemn hymn. Bleat out afresh, ye hills; ye mossy rocks, Retain the sound: the broad responsive low Ye valleys, raise; for the great Shepherd reigns; And his unsuffering kingdom yet will come. Ye woodlands, all awake: a boundless song Burst from the groves; and, when the restless day, clear, At solemn pauses, through the swelling base; Rivers unknown to song, where first the sun So fancy dreams. Disprove it, if ye can, Ye reas'ners broad awake, whose busy search Of argument, employ'd too oft amiss, Sifts half the pleasures of short life away! Thou fell'st mature, and, in the loamy clod Swelling with vegetative force instinct, Didst burst thine egg, as theirs the fabled Twins, With prominent wens globose-till at the last, The rottenness, which time is charg'd to inflict On other mighty ones, found also thee. What exhibitions various hath the world Witness'd of mutability in all, That we account most durable below! Now stars. Two lobes, protruding, pair'd Created changeable, and change at last Destroys them. Skies uncertain, now the heat Transmitting cloudless, and the solar beam Invigorate by turns the springs of life Fine, passing thought, e'en in her coarsest works, Delight in agitation, yet sustain Thought cannot spend itself, comparing still The great and little of thy lot, thy growth From almost nullity into a state Of matchless grandeur, and declension thence, Slow, into such magnificent decay. Time was, when, settling on thy leaf, a fly Could shake thee to the root-and time has been When tempests could not. At thy firmest age Thou hadst within thy bole solid contents, That might have ribb'd the sides and plank'd the deck Of some flagg'd admiral, and tortuous arms, The shipwright's darling treasure, didst pre sent To the four quarter'd winds, robust and bold, Warp'd into tough knee-timber,* many a load! * Knee-timber is found in the crooked arms of oak, which by reason of their distortion, are easily adjusted to the angle formed where the deck and the ship's sides meet. |