An agency divine, to make him know His moment when to sink and when to rise,
age, than to arrest his courfe? 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 subtile lymph Through th' imperceptible meand'ring veins Of leaf and flow'r? It sleeps; and th' icy touch Of unprolific winter has impress’d A cold ftagnation on th' intestine tide. But let the months go round, a few short months, And all thall be restor'd. These naked shoots, Barren as lances, among which the wind Makes wintry music, sighing as it goes, Shall
put their graceful foliage on again, And, more aspiring, and with ampler spread, 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; fyringa, iv'ry pure; :
The scentless and the scented rose; this red
And of an humbler growth, the * other tall, And throwing up into the darkest gloom Of neighb'ring 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 set With purple spikes pyramidal, as if, Studious of ornament, yet unresolv'd Which hue lhe most approv’d, she chose them all; Copious of flow’rs the woodbine, pale and wan, But well compensating her fickly looks With never-cloying odours, early and late; Hypericum, all bloom, so thick a swarm Of Aow'rs, like flies clothing her Nender rods, That scarce a leaf appears; mezerion, too, Though leafless, well attir’d, and thick beset
With blushing wreaths, investing ev'ry spray; Althæa with the purple eye; the broom, Yellow and bright, as bullion unalloy’d, Her bloftoms; and, luxuriant above all, The jasmine, throwing wide her elegant sweets, The deep dark green of whose unvarnish'd leaf Makes inore conspicuous, and illumines more The bright profusion of her scatter'd stars.ma These have been, and these shall be in their day; And all this uniform, uncolour'd 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 progress, when she lectures man In heav'nly truth; evincing, as she makes The grand transition, that there lives and works A foul in all things, and that soul is God. The beauties of the wilderness are his, That make so gay the folitary place Where no eye fees them. And the fairer forms
That cultivation glories in, are his. He sets the bright procession 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 case, Ruffet 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, When all creation started into birth,
The infant elements receiv'd a law, From which they swerve not since. That under force Of that controuling 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 Th’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 measure, by the scanty rule And standard 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 satisfy a law So vast in its demands, unless impellid To ceaseless service by a ceaseless force, And under pressure of some conscious cause? 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 fecret fire
By which the mighcy process is maintain’d, Who Neeps not, is not weary; in whose fight Slow-circling ages are as transient days;
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