"T is 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 While on that isthmus which commands God, who instructs the brutes to scent Whose wisdom fixed the scale 1830. 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, 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 noontide 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, Of man's inquiring gaze, but to his hope 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 Yet, by the Almighty's ever-during care, 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, To the soft murmur of the vagrant Bee. A slender sound! yet hoary Time Doth to the Soul exalt it with the chime |