HYMN OF NATURE.
HARK, my soul, how every thing
Strives to serve our bounteous King;
Each a double tribute pays,
Sings its part, and then obeys.
Nature's chief and sweetest choir
Him with cheerful notes admire ;
Chanting every day their lauds,
While the grove their song applauds.
Though their voices lower be,
Streams have, too, their melody;
Night and day they warbling run,
Never pause, but still sing on.
All the flowers that gild the spring
Hither their still music bring;
If Heaven bless them, thankful they
Smell more sweet, and look more gay.
Wake, for shame, my sluggish heart,
Wake, and gladly sing thy part;
Learn of birds, and springs, and flowers,
How to use thy nobler powers.
SILENT PRAISE.
THOU, who givest to the woodland wren
A throat, like to a little light-set door,
That opens to his early joy,
The spirit of true worship, which is more
Than all this sylvan rapture: what a world
Is Thine, O Lord! - skies, earth, men, beasts,
and birds!
The poet and the painter have unfurled
Their love and wonder in descriptive words,
Or sprightly hues, each, after his own sort,
Emptying his heart of its delicious hoards;
But all self-conscious blazonry comes short
Of that still sense no active mood affords,
Ere yet the brush is dipt, or uttered phrase
Hath breathed abroad those folds of silent praise!
EXTRACT FROM "THE EXCURSION."
but for the growing youth,
What soul was his, when, from the naked top
Of some bold headland, he beheld the sun
Rise up, and bathe the world in light! He looked —
Ocean and earth, the solid frame of earth
And ocean's liquid mass, beneath him lay
In gladness and deep joy. The clouds were touched,
And in their silent faces did he read
Unutterable love. Sound needed none,
Nor any voice of joy; his spirit drank
The spectacle sensation, soul, and form
All melted into him; they swallowed up
His animal being; in them did he live,
And by them did he live; they were his life.
In such access of mind, in such high hour
Of visitation from the living God,
Thought was not; in enjoyment it expired.
No thanks he breathed, he proffered no request;
Rapt into still communion that transcends
The imperfect offices of prayer and praise,
His mind was a thanksgiving to the power
That made him; it was blessedness and love!
FROM "FROST AT MIDNIGHT.”
EAR babe, that sleepest cradled by my side, Whose gentle breathings, heard in this deep calm,
Fill up the interspersèd vacancies
And momentary pauses of the thought!
My babe so beautiful! it thrills my heart
With tender gladness, thus to look at thee,
And think that thou shalt learn far other lore
And in far other scenes! For I was reared
In the great city, pent 'mid cloisters dim,
And saw nought lovely but the sky and stars.
But thou, my babe! shilt wander like a breeze
By lakes and sandy shores, beneath the crags
Of ancient mountains, and beneath the clouds,
Which image in their bulk both lakes and shores
And mountain crags: so shalt thou see and hear
The lovely shapes and sounds intelligible
Of that eternal language, which thy God
Utters, who from eternity doth teach
Himself in all, and all things in himself.
Great universal Teacher! he shall mould
Thy spirit, and by giving make it ask.
OMES something down with eventide,
Beside the sunset's golden bars,
Beside the floating scents, beside
The twinkling shadows of the stars.
Upon the river's rippling face,
Flash after flash, the white
Broke up in many a shallow place;
The rest was soft and bright.
By chance my eye fell on the stream :
How many a marvellous power
- sleeps, and doth not dream!
This knew I in that hour.
For then my heart, so full of strife,
No more was in me stirred;
My life was in the river's life,
And I nor saw nor heard.
I and the river, we were one:
The shade beneath the bank,
I felt it cool; the setting sun
Into my spirit sank.
A rushing thing in power serene
I was; the mystery
I felt of having ever been,
And being still to be.
Was it a moment or an hour?
I know not; but I mourned
When, from that realm of awful power,
I to these fields returned.
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