SAIL, holy Light, offspring of Heaven first-born! Or of the Eternal coeternal beam,
May I express thee unblamed? since God is light,
And never but in unapproachéd light Dwelt from eternity-dwelt then in thee, Bright effluence of bright essence increate! Or hear'st thou rather pure ethereal stream, Whose fountain who shall tell? Before the Sun, Before the heavens thou wert, and at the voice Of God, as with a mantle, didst invest The rising world of waters dark and deep, Won from the void and formless Infinite!
For wonderful indeed are all his works. Pleasant to know, and worthiest to be all Had in remembrance always with delight! But what created mind can comprehend Their number, or the wisdom infinite That brought them forth, but hid their causes deep? I saw when, at his word, the formless mass, This world's material mould, came to a heap: Confusion heard his voice, and wild uproar Stood ruled, stood vast Infinitude confined; Till, at his second bidding, darkness fled, Light shone, and order from disorder sprung. JOHN MILTON.
Where'er the oak's thick branches stretch A broader, browner shade,
Where'er the rude and moss-grown beech O'ercanopies the glade,
Beside some water's rushy brink
With me the Muse shall sit, and think
(At ease reclined in rustic state) How vain the ardor of the crowd, How low, how little are the proud, How indigent the great!
Still is the toiling hand of care;
The panting herds repose:
Yet hark, how through the peopled air
The busy murmur glows!
The insect youth are on the wing, Eager to taste the honeyed spring
In Fortune's varying colors drest: Brushed by the hand of rough mischance Or chilled by age, their airy dance They leave, in dust to rest.
Methinks I hear in accents low The sportive kind reply: Poor moralist! and what art thou? A solitary fly!
Thy joys no glittering female meets, No hive hast thou of hoarded sweets, No painted plumage to display; On hasty wings thy youth is flown; Thy sun is set, thy spring is gone,- We frolic while 't is May.
IS morning; and the sun, with ruddy orb Ascending, fires the horizon; while the clouds That crowd away before the driving wind, More ardent as the disk emerges more, Resemble most some city in a blaze, Seen through the leafless wood. His slanting ray Slides ineffectual down the snowy vale, And, tingeing all with his own rosy hue, From every herb and every spiry blade Stretches a length of shadow o'er the field. Mine, spindling into longitude immense, In spite of gravity, and sage remark That I myself am but a fleeting shade, Provokes me to a smile. With eye askance I view the muscular proportioned limb Transformed to a lean shank. The shapeless pair, As they designed to mock me, at my side Take step for step; and, as I near approach
The cottage, walk along the plastered wall, Preposterous sight! the legs without the man. The verdure of the plain lies buried deep Beneath the dazzling deluge; and the bents, And coarser grass upspearing o'er the rest, Of late unsightly and unseen, now shine Conspicuous, and in bright apparel clad, And, fledged with icy feathers, not superb. The cattle mourn in corners, where the fence Screens them, and seem half petrified to sleep In unrecumbent sadness. There they wait Their wonted fodder; not, like hungering man, Fretful if unsupplied; but silent, meek, And patient of the slow-paced swain's delay. He from the stack carves out the accustomed load, Deep plunging, and again deep plunging oft, His broad keen knife into the solid mass; Smooth as a wall the upright remnant stands,
With such undeviating and even force He severs it away: no needless care Lest storms should overset the leaning pile Deciduous, or its own unbalanced weight. Forth goes the woodman, leaving unconcerned The cheerful haunts of men -- to wield the axe And drive the wedge in yonder forest drear, From morn to eve his solitary task. Shaggy and lean and shrewd with pointed ears, And tail cropped short, half lurcher and half cur, His dog attends him. Close behind his heel Now creeps he slow; and now, with many a frisk Wide-scampering, snatches up the drifted snow With ivory teeth, or ploughs it with his snout; Then shakes his powdered coat, and barks for joy.
Now from the roost, or from the neighboring pale, Where, diligent to catch the first faint gleam Of smiling day, they gossiped side by side, Come trooping at the housewife's well-known call The feathered tribes domestic. Half on wing And half on foot, they brush the fleecy flood, Conscious and fearful of too deep a plunge. The sparrows peep, and quit the sheltering eaves To seize the fair occasion. Well they eye The scattered grain, and, thievishly resolved To escape the impending famine, often scared As oft return, a pert voracious kind. Clean riddance quickly made, one only care Remains to each, the search of sunny nook, Or shed impervious to the blast. Resigned To sad necessity, the cock foregoes
His wonted strut, and, wading at their head With well-considered steps, seems to resent
INTER, wilt thou never, never go?
O Summer, but I weary for thy coming,
Longing once more to hear the Luggie flow, And frugal bees, laboriously humming. Now the east wind diseases the infirm,
And I must crouch in corners from rough weather; Sometimes a winter sunset is a charm
When the fired clouds, compacted, blaze together, And the large sun dips red behind the hills. I, from my window, can behold this pleasure; And the eternal moon, what time she fills Her orb with argent, treading a soft measure, With queenly motions of a bridal mood, Through the white spaces of infinitude.
THE key of Nature is laid at man's feet, because he is its divinely-constituted Sovereign.
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