The laughter of the Christmas hearth And daily, in the conscious breast, 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, Ye daunt the proud array of war, 'Tis said, that warnings ye dispense, Unwelcome insight! Yet there are While on that isthmus which commands God, who instructs the brutes to scent Whose wisdom fixed the scale 1830. XLV. VERNAL ODE. [COMPOSED at Rydal Mount, to place in view the immortality of succession where immortality is denied, as far as wo know, to the individual creature.] 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, 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 Where oft the venturous heifer drinks the noontide breeze. Upon the apex of that lofty cone 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; Poured through the echoing hills around, "No wintry desolations, Scorching blight or noxious dew, Affect my native habitations; Buried in glory, far beyond the scope 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. What if those bright fires Shine subject to decay, III. Sons haply of extinguished sires, Themselves to lose their light, or pass away Like clouds before the wind, Be thanks poured out to Him whose hand bestows, Nightly, on human kind That vision of endurance and repose. -And though to every draught of vital breath Respond with sympathetic motion; Grows but to perish, and entrust And saves the peopled fields of earth Sweet flowers;-what living eye hath viewed And through your sweet vicissitudes to range!" IV. O, nursed at happy distance from the cares Prefer'st a garland culled from purple heath, Of thy contented Votary Such melody to hear! Him rather suits it, side by side with thee, While thy tired lute hangs on the hawthorn-tree, Of ages coming, ages gone; (Nations from before them sweeping, Regions in destruction steeping,) With that faint utterance, which tells That spreads no waste; a social builder; one |