How oft from you, derided Powers!
Comes Faith that in auspicious hours
Builds castles, not of air :

Bodings unsanctioned by the will
Flow from your visionary skill,

And teach us to beware.

The bosom-weight, your stubborn gift,
That no philosophy can lift,

Shall vanish, if ye please,

Like morning mist: and, where it lay,

The spirits at your bidding play

In gaiety and ease.

Star-guided contemplations move

Through space, though calm, not raised above

Prognostics that ye rule;

The naked Indian of the wild,

And haply, too, the cradled Child,
Are pupils of your school.

But who can fathom your intents,
Number their signs or instruments ?
A rainbow, a sunbeam,

A subtle smell that Spring unbinds,
Dead pause abrupt of midnight winds,
An echo, or a dream.

The laughter of the Christmas hearth
With sighs of self-exhausted mirth
Ye feelingly reprove;

And daily, in the conscious breast,
Your visitations are a test

And exercise of love.

When some great change gives boundless scope
To an exulting Nation's hope,

Oft, startled and made wise
By your low-breathed interpretings,

The simply-meek foretaste the springs

Of bitter contraries.

Ye daunt the proud array of war,
Pervade the lonely ocean far

As sail hath been unfurled;

For dancers in the festive hall
What ghastly partners hath your call
Fetched from the shadowy world!

'Tis said, that warnings ye dispense, Emboldened by a keener sense;

That men have lived for whom, With dread precision, ye made clear The hour that in a distant year

Should knell them to the tomb.

Unwelcome insight! Yet there are
Blest times when mystery is laid bare,
Truth shows a glorious face,

While on that isthmus which commands
The councils of both worlds, she stands,
Sage Spirits! by your grace.

God, who instructs the brutes to scent
All changes of the element,

Whose wisdom fixed the scale
Of natures, for our wants provides
By higher, sometimes humbler, guides,
When lights of reason fail.

1830.

XL.

VERNAL ODE.

Rerum Natura tota est nusquam magis quam in minimis.

PLIN. NAT. HIST.

I.

Beneath the concave of an April sky,

When all the fields with freshest green were dight,
Appeared, in presence of the spiritual eye
That aids or supersedes our grosser sight,
The form and rich habiliments of One

Whose countenance bore resemblance to the sun,

When it reveals, in evening majesty,

Features half lost amid their own pure light.
Poised like a weary cloud, in middle air

He hung, then floated with angelic ease
(Softening that bright effulgence by degrees)

Till he had reached a summit sharp and bare,

Where oft the venturous heifer drinks the noon-tide breeze.

Upon the apex of that lofty cone

Alighted, there the Stranger stood alone;

Fair as a gorgeous Fabric of the east

Suddenly raised by some enchanter's power, Where nothing was; and firm as some old Tower Of Britain's realm, whose leafy crest

Waves high, embellished by a gleaming shower!

II.

Beneath the shadow of his purple wings

Rested a golden harp ;—he touched the strings; And, after prelude of unearthly sound.

Poured through the echoing hills around,

He sang

"No wintry desolations, Scorching blight or noxious dew, Affect my native habitations;

Buried in glory, far beyond the scope

Of man's inquiring gaze, but to his hope
Imaged, though faintly, in the hue
Profound of night's ethereal blue;

And in the aspect of each radiant orb ;—

Some fixed, some wandering with no timid curb ;
But wandering star and fixed, to mortal eye,
Blended in absolute serenity,

And free from semblance of decline ;-
Fresh as if Evening brought their natal hour,
Her darkness splendour gave, her silence power,
To testify of Love and Grace divine.-