12. This day, be bread and peace my lot:
All else beneath the sun,
Thou know'st if best bestow'd or not,
And let thy will be done.
13. To thee, whose temple is all space,
Whose altar, earth, sea, skies!
One chorus let all beings raise !
All nature's incense rise.
1. O TREACH'ROUS Conscience! while she seems to sleep
On rose and myrtle, lull'd with syren song;
While she seems, nodding o'er her charge, to drop
On headlong appetite the slacken'd rein,
And give us up to license, unrecall'd,
Unmark'd;-see, from behind her secret stand,
The sly informer minutes ev'ry fault,
And her dread diary with horrour fills.
2. Not the gross act alone employs her pen;
She reconnoitres fancy's airy band,
A watchful foe! the formidable spy,
List'ning, o'erhears the whispers of our camp;
Our dawning purposes of heart explores,
And steals our embryos of iniquity.
3. As all rapacious usurers conceal
Their doomsday-book from all-consuming heirs;
Thus, with indulgence most severe, she treats
Us spendthrifts of inestimable time;
Unnoted, notes each moment misapply'd;
In leaves more durable than leaves of brass,
Writes our whole history; which death shall read
In ev'ry pale delinquent's private ear;
And judgement publish; publish to more worlds
Than this; and endless age in groans resound.-YOUNG,
SECTION XVII.
On an infant.
1. To the dark and silent tomb,
Soon I hasten'd from the womb:
Scarce the dawn of life began,
Ere I measur'd out my span.
2. I no smiling pleasures knew;
I no gay delights could view:
Joyless sojourner was 1,
Only born to weep and die.-
3. Happy infant, early bless'd!
Rest, in peaceful slumber, rest;
Early rescu'd from the cares,
Which increase with growing years.
4. No delights are worth thy stay,
Smiling as they seem, and gay;
Short and sickly are they all,
Hardly tasted ere they pall.
5. All our gayety is vain,
All our laughter is but pain;
Lasting only, and divine,
Is an innocence like thine.
SECTION XVIII.
The cuckoo.
1. HAIL, beauteous stranger of the wood, Attendant on the spring!
Now heav'n repairs thy rural seat,
And woods thy welcome sing.
2. Soon as the daisy decks the green,
Thy certain voice we hear:
Hast thou a star to guide thy path,
Or mark the rolling year?
3. Delightful visitant! with thee
I hail the time of flow'rs,
When heav'n is fill'd with musick sweet,
Of birds among the bow'rs.
4. The school-boy, wand'ring in the wood, To pull the flow'rs so gay,
Oft starts, thy curious voice to hear,
And imitates thy lay.
5. Soon as the pea puts on the bloom,
Thou fly'st the vocal vale,
An annual guest, in other lands,
Another spring to hail.
6. Sweet bird! thy bow'r is ever green,
Thy sky is ever clear;
Thou hast no sorrow in thy song,
No winter in thy year!
7. O could I fly, I'd fly with thee;
We'd make, with joyful wing,
Our annual visit o'er the globe,
Companions of the spring.-
SECTION XIX. /
Day. A pastoral in three parts.
1. In the barn the tenant cock,
Close to Partlet perch'd on high,
Briskly crows, (the shepherd's clock!)
Jocund that the morning's nigh.
2. Swiftly, from the mountain's brow,
Shadows, nurs'd by night retire;
And the peeping sun-beam, now
Paints with gold the village spire.
3. Philomel forsakes the thorn,
Plaintive where she prates at night;
And the lark to meet the morn,
Soars beyond the shepherd's sight.
4. From the low-roof'd cottage ridge,
See the chatt'ring swallow spring;
Darting through the one-arch'd bridge, Quick she dips her dappled wing. 5. Now the pine-tree's waving top, Gently greets the morning gale; Kidlinow, begin to crop Daison the dewy dale.
6. From the balmy sweets, uncloy'd, (Restless till her task be done,) Now the busy bee's employ'd, Sipping dew before the sun. 7. Trickling through the crevic'd rock, Where the limpid stream distils, Sweet refreshment waits the flock, When 'tis sun-drove from the hills. 8. Colin's for the promis'd corn
(Ere the harvest hopes are ripe) Anxious; whilst the huntsmen's horn, Boldly sounding, drowns his pipe. 9. Sweet O sweet, the warbling throng, On the white emblossom'd spray! Nature's universal song
Echoes to the rising day.
10. FERVID On the glitt'ring flood, Now the noontide radiance glows Drooping o'er its infant bud,
Not a dew-drop's left the rose. 11. By the brook the shepherd dines, From the fierce meridian heat, Shelter'd by the branching pines, Pendent o'er his grassy seat. 12. Now the flock forsakes the glade, Where uncheck'd the sun-beams fall, Sure to find a pleasing shade By the ivy'd abbey wall.
13. Echo, in her airy round,
O'er the river, rock, and hill,
Cannot catch a single sound,
Save the clack of yonder mill.
14. Cattle court the zephyrs bland, Where the streamlet wanders cool; Or with languid silence stand
Midway in the marshy pool.
15. But from mountain, dell, or stream,
Not a flutt'ring zephyr springs;
Fearful lest the noontide beam
Scorch its soft, its silken wings.
16. Not a leaf has leave to stir,
Nature's lull'd-serene-and still!
Quiet e'en the shepherd's cur,
Sleeping on the heath-clad hill.
17. Languid is the landscape round,
Till the fresh descending show'r,
Grateful to the thirsty ground,
Raises ev'ry fainting flow'r.
18. Now the hill-the hedge
-are green,
Now the warblers' throats in tune;
Blithsome is the verdant scene,
Brighten'd by the beams of Noon!
O'ER the heath the heifer strays
Free-(the furrow'd task is done :)
Now the village windows blaze,
Burnish'd by the setting sun.
20. Now he sets behind the hill,
Sinking from a golden sky:
Can the pencil's mimick skill
Copy the refulgent dye?
21. Trudging as the ploughmen go,
(To the smoking hamlet bound,)
Giant-like their shadows grow
Lengthen'd o'er the level ground.
22. Where the rising forest spreads
Shelter for the lordly dome!
To their high-built airy beds,
See the rooks returning home!
23. As the lark, with vary'd tune,
Carols to the ev'ning loud;"
Mark the mild resplendent moon,
Breaking through a parted cloud!
24. Now the hermit owlet peeps
From the barn or twisted brake;
And the blue mist slowly creeps,
Curling on the silver lake.
25. As the trout in speckled pride,
Playful from its bosom springs;
To the banks a ruffled tide
Verges in successive rings.
26. Tripping through the silken grass,
O'er the path-divided dale,
Mark the rose-complexion'd lass,
With her well-pois'd milking pail !
27. Linnets with unnumber'd notes,
And the cuckoo bird with two,
Tuning sweet their mellow throats,
Bid the setting sun adieu.-CUNNINGHAM.
SECTION XX.
1. SEE, thro' this air, this ocean, and this earth,
All matter quick, and bursting into birth.
Above, how high progressive life may go!
Around, how wide! how deep extend below:
Vast chain of being! which from God began,
Nature ethereal, human; angel, man;
Beast, bird, fish, insect, what no eye can see,
No glass can reach; from infinite to thee,
From thee to nothing.-On superiour pow'rs
Were we to press, inferiour might on ours;
Or in the full creation leave a void,
Where, one step broken, the great scale's destroy'd
From nature's chain whatever link you strike,
Tenth or ten thousandth, breaks the chain alike.
2. And, if each system in gradation roll,
Alike essential to th' amazing whole,
The least confusion but in one, not all
That system only, but the whole must fall.
Let earth, unbalanc'd from her orbit fly,
Planets and suns run lawless thro' the sky
Let ruling angels from their spheres be hurl'd,
Being on being wreck'd, and world on world;
Heav'n's whole foundations to their centre nod,
And nature tremble to the throne of God.
All this dread ORDER break-for whom? for thee?
Vile worm! Oh madness! pride! impiety!
3. What if the foot, ordain'd the dust to tread,
Or hand, to toil, aspir'd to be the head?
What if the head, the eye, or ear repin'd
To serve mere engines to the ruling mind?
Just as absurd for any part to claim
To be another, in this gen'ral frame:
Just as absurd, to mourn the tasks or pains,
The great directing MIND OF ALL ordains.
4. All are but parts of one stupendous whole,
Whose body nature is, and God the soul:
That, chang'd thro' all, and yet in all the same,
Great in the earth, as in th' ethereal frame;
Warms in the sun, refreshes in the breeze,
Glows in the stars, and blossoms in the trees;
Lives thro' all life, extends thro' all extent,
Spreads undivided, operates unspent ;
Breathes in our soul, informs our mortal part,
As full, as perfect, in a hair as heart;
As full, as perfect, in vile man that mourns,
As the rapt seraph that adores and burns:
To him no high, no low, no great, no small;
He fills, he bounds, connects, and equals all.
5. Cease then, nor ORDER imperfection name:
Our proper bliss depends on what we blame.
Know thy own point: this kind, this due degree
Of blindness, weakness, Heav'n bestows on thee.
Submit. In this or any other sphere,
Secure to be as blest as thou canst bear:
Safe in the hand of one disposing Pow'r,
Or in the natal, or the mortal hour.
All nature is but art, unknown to thee;
All chance, direction, which thou canst not see;
All discord, harmony not understood;
All partial evil, universal good;
And, spite of Pride, in erring Reason's spite,
One truth is clear, WHATEVER IS, IS RIGHT.—POPE,
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