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.

1930.

XLV.

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 splendor gave, her silence power, To testify of Love and Grace divine.

III.

"What if those bright fires

Shine subject to decay,

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 Renewed throughout the bounds of earth or ocean, The melancholy gates of Death

Respond with sympathetic motion;

Though all that feeds on nether air,

Howe'er magnificent or fair,

Grows but to perish, and intrust
Its ruins to their kindred dust;

Yet, by the Almighty's ever-during care,
Her procreant vigils Nature keeps
Amid the unfathomable deeps;

And saves the peopled fields of earth
From dread of emptiness or dearth.

Thus, in their stations, lifting tow'rd the sky
The foliaged head in cloudlike majesty,
The shadow-casting race of trees survive :
Thus, in the train of Spring, arrive

Sweet flowers;— what living eye hath viewed
Their myriads? - endlessly renewed,
Wherever strikes the sun's glad ray;
Where'er the subtle waters stray;
Wherever sportive breezes bend
Their course or genial showers descend!
Mortals, rejoice! the very Angels quit
Their mansions unsusceptible of change,

Amid your pleasant bowers to sit,

And through your sweet vicissitudes to range!"