But let the months go round, a few short months,
And all shall be reftored. These naked fhoots,
Barren as lances, among which the wind
Makes wintry mufic, fighing as it goes,
Shall put their graceful foliage on again,
And more afpiring, and with ampler spread,
Shall boaft new charms, and more than they have loft.
Then, each in its peculiar honours clad,
Shall publish even to the diftant eye
Its family and tribe. Laburnum, rich
In ftreaming gold; fyringa, ivory pure;
The fcentless, and the fcented rofe; this red,
And of an humbler growth, the * other tall,
And throwing up into the darkest gloom
Of neighbouring cypress, or more fable yew,
Her filver globes, light as the foamy surf,
That the wind fevers from the broken wave;
The lilac, various in array, now white,
Now fanguine, and her beauteous head now fet
With purple spikes pyramidal, as if
Studious of ornament, yet unrefolved
Which hue the moft approved, she chose them all;
Copious of flowers the woodbine, pale and wan,
But well compenfating her fickly looks
With never-cloying odours, early and late;
Hypericum all bloom, fo thick a swarm
Of flowers, like flies clothing her flender rods,
That scarce a leaf appears; mezerion too,
Though leaflefs, well attired, and thick befet
With blushing wreaths, invefting every spray;
Althea with the purple eye; the broom,
Yellow and bright, as bullion unalloyed,
Her bloffoms; and luxuriant above all
The jasmine, throwing wide her elegant sweets,
The deep dark green of whofe unvarnished leaf
Makes more confpicuous, and illumines more
The bright profufion of her scattered stars.-
These have been, and these shall be in their day;
And all this uniform uncoloured 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 progrefs, when she lectures man
In heavenly truth; evincing, as she makes
The grand tranfition, that there lives and works
A foul in all things, and that foul is God.
The beauties of the wilderness are his,
That makes fo gay the folitary place
Where no eye fees them. And the fairer forms,
That cultivation glories in, are his.
He fets the bright proceffion 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 cafe,
Ruffet and rude, folds up the tender germ,
Uninjured, with inimitable art;
And, ere one flowery season fades and dies,
Designs the blooming wonders of the next.
Some fay that in the origin of things, When all creation ftarted into birth, The infant elements received a law,
From which they fwerve not since. That under force Of that controlling ordinance they move,
And need not his immediate hand, who first
Prescribed their courfe, to regulate it now.
Thus dream they, and contrive to fave a God
The incumbrance 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 fevere a task.
So man, the moth, is not afraid, it seems,
To span omnipotence, and measure might,
That knows no mea'ure, by the icanty rule
And ftandard of his own, that is to-day,
And is not ere to-morrow's fun go down.
But how should matter occupy a charge
Dull as it is, and fatisfy a law
So vaft in its demands, unless impelled
To ceaseless service by a ceafelefs force,
And under preffure of some confcious cause?
The Lord of all, himself through all diffused,
Suftains, and is the life of all that lives.
Nature is but a name for an effect,
Whose cause is God. He feeds the secret fire,
By which the mighty process is maintained,
Who fleeps not, is not weary; in whose fight
Slow circling ages are as tranfient days;
Whose work is without labour; whose designs
No flaw deforms, no difficulty thwarts:
And whose beneficence no charge exhausts.
Him blind antiquity profaned, not served,
With felf-taught rites, and under various names,
Female and male, Pomona, Pales, Pan,
And Flora, and Vertumnus; peopling earth
With tutelary goddeffes and gods,
That were not; and commending as they would To each fome province, garden, field, or grove. But all are under one. One fpirit-His,
Who wore the platted thorns with bleeding brows, Rules univerfal nature. Not a flower
But shows fome touch, in freckle, ftreak, or ftain,
Of his unrivalled pencil. He infpires
Their balmy odours, and imparts their hues,
And bathes their eyes with nectar, and includes,
In grains as countless as the fea-fide fands,
The forms, with which he sprinkles all the earth.
Happy who walks with him! whom what he finds
Of flavour 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 fun,
Prompts with remembrance of a prefent God.
His presence, who made all so fair, perceived
Makes all ftill 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 fake,
Yet not in vengeance; as this smiling sky,
So foon fucceeding fuch an angry night,
And these diffolving fnows, and this clear stream
Recovering faft its liquid mufic, prove.
Who then, that has a mind well ftrung and tuned To contemplation, and within his reach
A fcene fo friendly to his favourite task,
Would wafte attention at the chequered board,
His hoft of wooden warriors to and fro
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