By Nature's swift and secret-working hand,
The garden glows, and fills the liberal air
With lavish fragrance; while the promised fruit
Lies yet a little embryo, unperceived
Within its crimson folds. Now from the town,
Buried in smoke, and sleep, and noisome damps,
Oft let me wander o'er the dewy fields,
Where freshness breathes, and dash the trembling drops
From the bent bush, as through the verdant maze
Of sweetbrier hedges I pursue my walk;
Or taste the smell of dairy; or ascend
Some eminence, Augusta, in thy plains,
And see the country, far diffused around,
One boundless blush, one white-empurpled shower
Of mingled blossoms; where the raptured eye
Hurries from joy to joy, and, hid beneath
The fair profusion, yellow Autumn spies.
But yonder comes the powerful king of day,
Rejoicing in the east. The lessening cloud,
The kindling azure, and the mountain's brow
Illumed with fluid gold, his near approach
Betoken glad. Lo! now, apparent all,
Aslant the dew-bright Earth, and colored air,
He looks in boundless majesty abroad;
And sheds the shining day, that burnished plays On rocks, and hills, and towers, and wandering streams,
High gleaming from afar. Prime cheerer, Light!
Of all material beings first and best!
Efflux divine! Nature's resplendent robe!
Without whose vesting beauty all were wrapt
In unessential gloom; and thou, O Sun!
Soul of surrounding worlds! in whom best seen
Shines out thy Maker! May I sing of thee?
HYMN ON THE SEASONS.
These, as they change, Almighty Father, these,
Are but the varied God. The rolling year
Is full of thee. Forth in the pleasing spring
Thy beauty walks, thy tenderness and love.
Wide flush the fields; the softening air is balm;
Echo the mountains round; the forest smiles;
And every sense and every heart is joy.
Then comes thy glory in the summer months,
With light and heat refulgent. Then thy sun
Shoots full perfection through the swelling year;
And oft thy voice in dreadful thunder speaks;
And oft at dawn, deep noon, or falling eve,
By brooks and groves, in hollow-whispering gales.
Thy bounty shines in autumn unconfined,
And spreads a common feast for all that lives.
In winter, awful thou! with clouds and storms
Around thee thrown, tempest o'er tempest rolled,
Majestic darkness! on the whirlwind's wing,
Riding sublime, thou bidd'st the world adore,
And humblest nature with thy northern blast.
Mysterious round! What skill, what force di-
vine,
Deep felt, in these appear! a simple train,
Yet so delightful mixed, with such kind art,
Such beauty and beneficence combined;
Shade, unperceived, so softening into shade;
And all so forming an harmonious whole,
That, as they still succeed, they ravish still.
But wandering oft, with brute unconscious gaze,
Man marks not thee, marks not the mighty hand,
That, ever-busy, wheels the silent spheres,
Works in the secret deep, shoots, steaming, thence
The fair profusion that o'erspreads the spring,
Flings from the sun direct the flaming day,
Feeds every creature, hurls the tempest forth ;
And, as on earth this grateful change revolves,
With transport touches all the springs of life.
Nature, attend! join every living soul,
Beneath the spacious temple of the sky,
In adoration join, and, ardent, raise
One general song! To him, ye vocal gales,
Breathe soft, whose spirit in your freshness 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 astonished world, lift high to
heaven
The impetuous song, and say from whom you
His praise, ye brooks, attune, ye trembling 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 pencil
Ye forests bend, ye harvests wave, to him;
Breathe your still song into the reaper's heart,
As home he goes beneath the joyous moon.
Ye that keep watch in heaven, as earth asleep
Unconscious lies, effuse your mildest beams,
Ye constellations, while your angels strike,
Amid the spangled sky, the silver lyre.
Great source of day! best image here below
Of thy Creator, ever pouring wide,
From world to world, the vital ocean round,
On nature write with every beam his praise.
The thunder rolls: be hushed the prostrate world;
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,
Expiring, lays the warbling world asleep,
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
The long-resounding voice, oft breaking clear,
At solemn pauses, through the swelling bass;
And, as each mingling flame increases each,
In one united ardor rise to Heaven.
Or, if you rather choose the rural shade,
And find a fane in every secret grove;
There let the shepherd's flute, the virgin's lay,
The prompting seraph, and the poet's lyre,
Still sing the God of Seasons, as they roll.
For me, when I forget the darling theme,
Whether the blossom blows, the summer-ray
Russets the plain, inspiring autumn gleams;
Or winter rises in the blackening east;
Be my tongue mute, my fancy paint no more,
And, dead to joy, forget my heart to beat!
Should fate command me to the farthest verge Of the green earth, to distant barbarous climes, Rivers unknown to song; where first the sun Gilds Indian mountains, or his setting beam Flames on the Atlantic isles; 'tis naught to me, Since God is ever present, ever felt,
In the void waste, as in the city full;
And where he vital spreads, there must be joy.
When even at last the solemn hour shall come,
And wing my mystic flight to future worlds,
I cheerful will obey; there, with new powers,
Will rising wonders sing: I cannot go
Where Universal Love not smiles around,
Sustaining all yon orbs, and all their suns;
From seeming evil still educing good,
And better thence again, and better still,
In infinite progression. But I lose
Myself in him, in light ineffable;
Come, then, expressive Silence, muse his praise.
FROM "THE CASTLE OF INDOLENCE."
It was not by vile loitering in ease That Greece obtained the brighter palm of art, That soft yet ardent Athens learnt to please, To keen the wit, and to sublime the heart, In all supreme, complete in every part! It was not thence majestic Rome arose, And o'er the nations shook her conquering dart: For sluggard's brow the laurel never grows; Renown is not the child of indolent repose.
Had unambitious mortals minded naught, But in loose joy their time to wear away; Had they alone the lap of Dalliance sought, Pleased on her pillow their dull heads to lay, Rude nature's state had been our state to-day; No cities e'er their towery fronts had raised, No arts had made us opulent and gay; With brother-brutes the human race had grazed; None e'er had soared to fame, none honored been, none praised.
Great Homer's song had never fired the breast
To thirst of glory, and heroic deeds;
Sweet Maro's' Muse, sunk in inglorious rest,
Had silent slept amid the Mincian reeds;
The wits of modern time had told their beads,
The monkish legends been their only strains;
Our Milton's Eden had lain wrapt in weeds,
Our Shakspeare strolled and laughed with War-
wick swains,
Ne had my master Spenser charmed his Mulla's plains.
Dumb too had been the sage historic Muse, And perished all the sons of ancient fame; Those starry lights of virtue, that diffuse
1 Virgil, born on the banks of the Mincius, in the north of Italy.
Dyer (1700-1758) was a young Welshman, son of a prosperous attorney. He tried to be a painter, and went to Rome to study, but gave it up on finding he could not rise to his ideal. Grongar Hill was near his birthplace, and he sang of it at six-and-twenty. The poem, if first published in the nineteenth century, would have excited less attention; but it was a new departure in its day from the swelling diction then so prevalent, that even Thomson did not escape from it in describing natural scenes. Dyer struck a less artificial note, but could not wholly cast off nymphs and Muses, gods and goddesses, then considered a necessary part of the "properties" of the poetical adventurer. He wrote "The Fleece," a poem; also one on "The Ruins of Rome"both in blank verse. Wordsworth addresses a sonnet to him, and predicts that "a grateful few" will love Dyer's modest lay,
"Long as the thrush shall pipe on Grongar Hill!"
GRONGAR HILL.
Silent nymph, with curious eye,
Who, the purple evening, lie
On the mountain's lonely van,
Beyond the noise of busy man;
Painting fair the form of things,
While the yellow linnet sings,
Or the tuneful nightingale
Charms the forest with her tale,-
Come with all thy various hues,
Come, and aid thy sister Muse;
Now, while Phœbus riding high
Gives lustre to the land and sky!
Grongar Hill invites my song,
Draw the landscape bright and strong;
Grongar, in whose mossy cells
Sweetly-musing Quiet dwells;
Grongar, in whose silent shade,
For the modest Muses made,
So oft I have, the evening still,
At the fountain of a rill,
Sate upon a flowery bed,
With my hand beneath my head,
While strayed my eyes o'er Towy's flood,
Over mead, and over wood,
From house to house, from hill to hill, Till Contemplation had her fill.
About his checkered sides I wind, And leave his brooks and meads behind, And groves and grottoes where I lay, And vistas shooting beams of day: Wide and wider spreads the vale, As circles on a smooth canal:
The mountains round, unhappy fate!
Sooner or later of all height,
Withdraw their summits from the skies,
And lessen as the others rise:
Still the prospect wider spreads,
Adds a thousand woods and meads;
Still it widens, widens still,
And sinks the newly risen hill.
Now, I gain the mountain's brow,
What a landscape lies below!
No clouds, no vapors intervene,
But the gay, the open scene
Does the face of nature show,
In all the hues of heaven's bow,
And, swelling to embrace the light,
Spreads around beneath the sight.
Old castles on the cliffs arise,
Proudly towering in the skies;
Rushing from the woods, the spires
Seem from hence ascending fires;
Half his beams Apollo sheds
On the yellow mountain-heads,
Gilds the fleeces of the flocks,
And glitters on the broken rocks.
Below me trees unnumbered rise,
Beautiful in various dyes:
The gloomy pine, the poplar blue,
The yellow beech, the sable yew,
The slender fir that taper grows,
The sturdy oak with broad-spread boughs.
And beyond the purple grove,
Haunt of Phyllis, queen of love!
Gaudy as the opening dawn,
Lies a long and level lawn,
On which a dark hill, steep and high,
Holds and charms the wandering eye.
Deep are his feet in Towy's flood,
His sides are clothed with waving wood,
And ancient towers crown his brow,
That cast an awful look below;
Whose ragged walls the ivy creeps,
And with her arms from falling keeps;
So both a safety from the wind
On mutual dependence find.
'Tis now the raven's bleak abode;
'Tis now the apartment of the toad;
And there the fox securely feeds;
And there the poisonous adder breeds,
Concealed in ruins, moss, and weeds;
While ever and anon there falls
Huge heaps of hoary mouldered walls.
Yet Time has seen,-that lifts the low,
And level lays the lofty brow,--
While the wanton zephyr sings,
Has seen this broken pile complete,
Big with the vanity of state:
But transient is the smile of Fate!
A little rule, a little sway,
A sunbeam in a winter's day,
Is all the proud and mighty have
Between the cradle and the grave.
And see the rivers how they run,
Through woods and meads, in shade and sun,
Sometimes swift, sometimes slow,
Wave succeeding wave, they go
A various journey to the deep,
Like human life to endless sleep.
Thus is Nature's vesture wrought,
To instruct our wandering thought;
Thus she dresses green and gay,
To disperse our cares away.
Ever charming, ever new,
When will the landscape tire the view!
The fountain's fall, the river's flow,
The woody valleys, warm and low;
The windy summit, wild and high,
Roughly rushing on the sky!
The pleasant seat, the ruined tower,
The naked rock, the shady bower;
The town and village, dome and farm,
Each give each a double charm,
As pearls upon an Ethiop's arm.
See on the mountain's southern side,
Where the prospect opens wide,
Where the evening gilds the tide,
How close and small the hedges lie!
What streaks of meadows cross the eye!
A step, methinks, may pass the stream,
So little distant dangers seem;
So we mistake the Future's face,
Eyed through Hope's deluding glass;
As you summits soft and fair,
Clad in colors of the air,
Which to those who journey near,
Barren, brown, and rough appear;
Still we tread the same coarse way,
The present's still a cloudy day.
Oh may I with myself agree,
And never covet what I see;
Content me with a humble shade,
My passions tamed, my wishes laid;
For while our wishes wildly roll,
We banish quiet from the soul:
'Tis thus the busy beat the air,
And misers gather wealth and care.
Now, even now, my joys run high,
As on the mountain turf I lie;
And in the vale perfumes his wings;
While the waters murmur deep,
While the shepherd charms his sheep,
While the birds unbounded fly,
And with music fill the sky,
Now, even now, my joys run high.
Be full, ye courts; be great who will; Search for Peace with all your skill: Open wide the lofty door,
Seek her on the marble floor.
In vain you search, she is not there;
In vain you search the domes of Care!
Grass and flowers Quiet treads,
On the meads, and mountain-heads,
Along with Pleasure, close allied,
Ever by each other's side;
And often, by the murmuring rill,
Hears the thrush, while all is still,
Within the groves of Grongar Hill.
Doddridge (1702-1751) was a native of London. lost both his parents at an early age, and pursued his studies for the ministry at an academy for Dissenters at Kibworth. He began his ministry at the age of twenty, and became an eminent preacher. As an author of practical religious works his reputation is very high. His "Rise and Progress of Religion in the Soul" is among the most esteemed of his productions. His hymns, which entitle him to a place among English religious poets, were unexcelled in their day, and show genuine devotional feeling, a good ear for versification, and fine literary taste. A pulmonary complaint caused Doddridge to try the climate of Lisbon. He arrived there on the 21st of October, 1751, but survived only five days. As a man he was much beloved, and his character shines forth in his writings.
YE GOLDEN LAMPS.
Ye golden lamps of heaven, farewell, With all your feeble light; Farewell, thou ever-changing moon, Pale empress of the night;
And thou, refulgent orb of day,
In brighter flames arrayed! My soul, that springs beyond thy sphere, No more demands thine aid.
Ye stars are but the shining dust Of my divine abode,—
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