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And renovation of a faded world,

See nought to wonder at. Should God again,

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As once in Gibeon, interrupt the race
Of th' undeviating and punctual sun,

How would the world admire! But speaks it less
An agency divine, to make him know

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His moment when to sink and when to rise,
Age after age, than to arrest his course?
All we behold is miracle; but seen
So duly, all is miracle in vain.

Where now the vital energy, that mov'd

While summer was, the pure and subtle lymph

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Through th' imperceptible meand'ring veins
Of leaf and flow'r? It sleeps; and th' icy touch
Of unprolifick winter has impress'd

A cold stagnation on th' intestine tide.

But let the months go round, a few short months, 140 And all shall be restor'd. These naked shoots,

Barren as lances, among which the wind

Makes wintry musick, sighing as it goes,

Shall put their graceful foliage on again,

And, more aspiring, and with ampier spread,

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Shall boast new charms, and more than they have lost. Then each in its peculiar honours clad,

Shall publish even to the distant eye

Its family and tribe. Laburnum, rich

In streaming gold; syringa, iv'ry pure

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The scentless and the scented rose; this red

And of a humbler growth, the other* tall,

And throwing up into the darkest gloom

Of neighb'ring cypress, or more sable yew,
Her silver globes. light as the foamy surf,
That the wind severs from the broken wave;
The lilack, various in array, now white,
Now sanguine, and her beauteous head now set
With purple spikes pyramidal, as if
Studious of ornament, yet unresolv'd
*The Guelder Rose.

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Which hue she most approv'd, she chose them all;
Copious of flowers, the woodbine, pale and wan,
But well compensating her sickly looks
With never cloying odours, early and late;
Hypericum all bloom, so thick a swarm

Of flowers, like flies clothing her slender rods,
That scarce a leaf appears; mezereon, too,
Though leafless, well-attir'd and thick beset
With blushing wreaths, investing every spray;
Althea with the purple eye; the broom
Yellow and bright, as bullion unalloy'd,
Her blossoms; and luxuriant above all
The jasmine, throwing wide her elegant sweets,
The deep dark green of whose unvarnish'd leaf
Makes more conspicuous, and illumines more
The bright profusion of her scatter'd stars.—
These have been, and these shall be in their day;
And all this uniform uncolour'd scene

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Shall be dismantled of its fleecy load,

And flush into variety again.

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From dearth to plenty, and from death to life,
Is Nature's progress, when she lectures man

In heav'nly truth; evincing, as she makes
The grand transition, that their lives and works

A soul in all things, and that soul is God.

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The beauties of the wilderness are his,

That makes so gay the solitary place,

Where no eye sees them. And the fairer forms,
That cultivation glories in, are his.

He sets the bright procession on its way,

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And marshals all the order of the year;

He marks the bounds, which winter may not pass,
And blunts his pointed fury; in its case,
Russet and rude, folds up the tender germ,
Uninjur'd, with inimitable art;
And, ere one flow'ry season fades and dies,
Designs the blooming wonders of the next.

Some say that in the origin of things,

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When all creation started into birth,

The infant elements receiv'd a law

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From which they swerv'd not since. That under force

Of that controlling ordinance they move,

And need not His immediate hand who first

Prescrib'd their course, to regulate it now.

Thus dream they, and contrive to save a God

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Th' encumbrance 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 severe a task.

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So man, the moth, is not afraid, it seems,
To span omnipotence, and measure might
That knows no measure, by the scanty rule
And standard of his own, that is to-day,
And is not ere to-morrow's sun go down.
But how should matter occupy a charge,
Dull as it is, and satisfy a law

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So vast in its demands, unless impell'd
To ceaseless service by a ceaseless force,

And under pressure of some conscious cause?

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The Lord of all, himself through all diffus'd,
Sustains, 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 maintain'd,
Who sleeps not, is not weary; in whose sight
Slow circling ages are as transient days;
Whose work is without labour; whose designs
No flaw deforms, no difficulty thwarts;

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And whose beneficence no charge exhausts.

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Him blind antiquity profan'd, not serv'd,

With self-taught rites, and under various names,

Female and male, Pomona, Pales, Pan,

And Flora, and Vertumnus; peopling earth

With tutelary goddesses and gods,

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That were not and commending as they would

To each some province, garden, field, or grove,
But all are under one. One spirit-His

Who wore the platted thorns with bleeding browsRules universal nature. Not a flower 240

But shows some touch, in freckle, streak, or stain,
Of his unrivall'd pencil. He inspires
Their balmy odours, and imparts their hues,
And bathes their eyes with nectar, and includes,
In grains as countless as the seaside sands,
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,
Of what he views of beautiful or grand
In nature, from the broad majestick oak
To the green blade that twinkles in the sun,
Prompts with remembrance of a present God
His presence, who made all so fair, perceiv'd,
Makes all still fairer As with him no scene
Is dreary, so with him all seasons please.

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Though winter had been none, had man been true
And earth be punish'd for its tenant's sake,

Yet not in vengeance; as this smiling sky,
So soon succeeding such an angry night,

And these dissolving snows, and this clear stream 260
Recovering fast its liquid musick, prove.

Who, then, that has a mind well strung and tun d To contemplation, and within his reach

A scene so friendly to his fav'rite task,

Would waste attention at the checker'd board.

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His host of wooden warriours to and fro
Marching and countermarching, with an eye
As fix'd as marble, with a forehead ridg'd
And furrow'd into storms, and with a hand
Trembling, as if eternity were hung
In balance on his conduct of a pin ?
Nor envies he aught more their idle sport,
Who pant with application misapplied
To trivial toys, and, pushing iv'ry balls

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Across a velvet level, feel a joy

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Akin to rapture, when the bauble finds

Its destin'd goal, of difficult access.

Nor deems he wiser him, who gives his noon
To miss, the mercer's plague from shop to shop
Wand'ring, and litt'ring with unfolded silks
The polish'd counter, and approving none,
Or promising with smiles to call again.
Nor him, who by his vanity seduc'd,

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And sooth'd into a dream, that he discerns

The diffrence of a Guido from a daub,

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Frequents the crowded auction station'd there
As duly as the Langford of the show,

With glass at eye, and catalogue in hand,
And tongue accomplish'd in the fulsome cant
And pedantry that coxcombs learn with ease:
Oft as the price-deciding hammer falls,
He notes it in his book, then raps his box,
Swears 'tis a bargain, rails at his hard fate,
That he has let it pass-but never bids!

Here unmolested, through whatever sign
The sun proceeds, I wander. Neither mist,
Nor freezing sky nor sultry, checking me,
Nor stranger intermeddling with my joy.
E'en in the spring and playtime of the year,
That calls the unwonted villager abroad
With all her little ones, a sportive train,
To gather kingcups in the yellow mead,

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And prink their hair with daisies, or to pick

A cheap but wholesome salad from the brook

These shades are all my own. The tim'rous hare,
Grown so familiar with her frequent guest,
Scarce shuns me; and the stock-dove, unalarm'd,
Sits cooing in the pinetree, nor suspends
His long love ditty for my near approach.

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Drawn from his refuge in some lonely elm,

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That age or injury has hollow'd deep,

Where, on his bed of wool and matted leaves,

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