2.

Ye plough-shares sparkling on the slopes!

Ye snow-white lambs that trip
Imprisoned 'mid the formal props
Of restless ownership!

Ye trees, that may to-morrow fall
To feed the insatiate Prodigal !
Lawns, houses, chattels, groves, and fields,
All that the fertile valley shields;
Wages of folly - baits of crime,

Of life's uneasy game the stake,
Playthings that keep the eyes awake
Of drowsy, dotard Time; -

O care! O guilt! O vales and plains,
Here, 'mid his own unvexed domains,

A Genius dwells, that can subdue

At once all memory of You,

Most potent when mists veil the sky,

Mists that distort and magnify;

While the coarse rushes, to the sweeping breeze,

Sigh forth their ancient melodies!

3.

List to those shriller notes!

that march

Perchance was on the blast,

When, through this Height's inverted arch,
Rome's earliest legion passed!

-They saw, adventurously impelled,
And older eyes than theirs beheld,

This block and whose Church-like frame

yon,

Gives to the savage Pass its name.
Aspiring Road! that lov'st to hide
Thy daring in a vapoury bourn,
Not seldom may the hour return
When thou shalt be my Guide;
And I (as often we find cause,
When life is at a weary pause,
And we have panted up the hill
Of duty with reluctant will)

Be thankful, even though tired and faint,
For the rich bounties of Constraint;
Whence oft invigorating transports flow
That Choice lacked courage to bestow !

4.

My Soul was grateful for delight
That wore a threatening brow;

A veil is lifted

can she slight

The scene that opens now?

Though habitation none appear,
The greenness tells, man must be there;
The shelter that the pérspective

Is of the clime in which we live ;
Where Toil pursues his daily round;
Where Pity sheds sweet tears, and Love,
In woodbine bower or birchen grove,
Inflicts his tender wound.

Who comes not hither ne'er shall know

How beautiful the world below;

Nor can he guess how lightly leaps
The brook adown the rocky steeps.

Farewell, thou desolate Domain !

Hope, pointing to the cultured Plain,
Carols like a shepherd boy;

And who is she?

Can that be Joy!

Who, with a sunbeam for her guide,
Smoothly skims the meadows wide;
While Faith, from yonder opening cloud,
To hill and vale proclaims aloud,

"Whate'er the weak may dread, the wicked dare,

Thy lot, O Man, is good, thy portion fair!"

XXXVI.

EVENING ODE,

COMPOSED UPON AN EVENING OF EXTRAORDINARY SPLENDOUR AND BEAUTY.

1.

HAD this effulgence disappeared
With flying haste, I might have sent,
Among the speechless clouds, a look
Of blank astonishment;

But 'tis endued with power to stay,
And sanctify one closing day,

That frail Mortality may see

What is ?ah no, but what can be!
Time was when field and watery cove
With mdulated echoes rang,

While choirs of fervent Angels sang

Their vespers in the grove;

Or, ranged like stars along some sovereign height, Warbled, for heaven above and earth below,

Strains suitable to both. Such holy rite,

Methinks, if audibly repeated now

From hill or valley, could not move

Sublimer transport, purer love,

Than doth this silent spectacle- the gleam

The shadow- and the

peace supreme!