Thyself without a witness, in these shades,
Of Thy perfections. Grandeur, strength and grace Are here to speak of Thee. This mighty oak,By whose immovable stem I stand, and seem Almost annihilated, not a prince,
In all the proud old world beyond the deep,
Ere wore his crown as loftily as he
Wears the green coronal of leaves with which
Thy hand has graced him. Nestled at his root
Is beauty, such as blooms not in the glare
Of the broad Sun. That delicate forest flower,
With scented breath, and looks so like a smile,
Seems, as it issues from the shapeless mould,
An emanation of th' indwelling life,
A visible token of the upholding love,
That are the soul of this wide Universe.
My heart is awed within me when I think
Of the great miracle that still goes on,
In silence, round me, the perpetual work
Of Thy creation, finish'd, yet renew'd
Forever. Written on Thy works I read
The lesson of Thy own eternity.
Lo! all grow old and die; but see, again,
How, on the faltering footsteps of decay,.
Youth presses
-ever gay and beautiful youth
In all its beautiful forms. These lofty trees
Wave not less proudly that their ancestors
Moulder beneath them.
One of Earth's charms: upon her bosom yet,
After the flight of untold centuries,
The freshness of her far beginning lies,
And yet shall lie. Life mocks the idle hate
Of his arch enemy Death; yea, seats himself
Upon the sepulchre, and blooms and smiles,
And of the triumphs of his ghastly foe
Makes his own nourishment.
From Thine own bosom, and shall have no end.
There have been holy men who hid themselves Deep in the woody wilderness, and gave
Their lives to thought and prayer, till they outlived
The generation born with them, nor seem'd
Less agèd than the hoary trees and rocks
Around them; and there have been holy men
Who deem'd it were not well to pass life thus.
But let me often to these solitudes
Retire, and, in Thy presence, re-assure
My feeble virtue. Here, its enemies,
The passions, at Thy plainer footsteps, shrink,
And tremble, and are still.
O God, when Thou
Dost scare the world with tempests, set on fire
The heavens with falling thunderbolts, or fill,
With all the waters of the firmament,
The swift, dark whirlwind, that uproots the woods
And drowns the villages; when, at Thy call,
Uprises the great deep, and throws himself
Upon the continent, and overwhelms
Its cities; who forgets not, at the sight
Of these tremendous tokens of Thy power,
His pride, and lays his strifes and follies by!
O, from these sterner aspects of Thy face
Spare me and mine; nor let us need the wrath
Of the mad, unchain'd elements, to teach
Who rules them. Be it ours to meditate,
In these calm shades, Thy milder majesty,
And to the beautiful order of Thy works
Learn to conform the order of our lives.
THE PRIMROSE OF THE ROCK.
A Rock there is whose homely front
The passing traveller slights;
Yet there the glow-worms hang their lamps
Like stars, at various heights;
And one coy Primrose to that Rock
The vernal breeze invites.
What hideous warfare hath been raged,
What kingdoms overthrown,
Since first I spied that Primrose-tuft
And mark'd it for my own;
A lasting link in Nature's chain
From highest Heaven let down!
The flowers, still faithful to the stems,
Their fellowship renew;
The stems are faithful to the root,
That worketh out of view;
And to the rock the root adheres,
In every fibre true.
Close clings to earth the living rock,
Though threatening still to fall;
The Earth is constant in her sphere;
And God upholds them all:
So blooms this lonely Plant, nor dreads
Her annual funeral.
Here closed the meditative strain;
But air breathed soft that day, The hoary mountain-heights were cheer'd, The sunny vale look'd gay;
And to the Primrose of the Rock
I gave this after-lay
I sang, Let myriads of bright flowers,
Like thee, in field and grove
Revive unenvied; - mightier far
Than tremblings, that reprove
Our vernal tendencies to hope,
Is God's redeeming love ;·
That love which changed
For sorrow that had bent
O'er hopeless dust, for wither'd age
Their moral element,
And turn'd the thistles of a curse
To types beneficent.
Sin-blighted though we are, we too,
The reasoning Sons of Men,
From one oblivious winter call'd
Shall rise, and breathe again;
And in eternal summer lose
Our threescore years and ten.
To humbleness of heart descends
This prescience from on high,
The faith that elevates the just,
Before and when they die;
And makes each soul a separate heaven,
A court for Deity.
THERE is a pleasure in the pathless woods,
There is a rapture on the lonely shore,
There is society, where none intrudes,
By the deep sea, and music in its roar:
I love not man the less, but Nature more,
From these our interviews, in which I steal
From all I may be, or have been before,
To mingle with the universe, and feel
What I can ne'er express, yet cannot all conceal.
Roll on, thou deep and dark blue Ocean, roll!
Ten thousand fleets sweep over thee in vain;
Man marks the earth with ruin, - his control
Stops with the shore: upon the watery plain,
The wrecks are all thy deed, nor doth remain
A shadow of man's ravage, save his own,
When for a moment, like a drop of rain,
He sinks into thy depths with bubbling groan, Without a grave, unknell'd, uncoffin'd, and unknown
The armaments, which thunderstrike the walls
Of rock-built cities, bidding nations quake,
And monarchs tremble in their capitals;
The oak leviathans, whose huge ribs make
Their clay creator the vain title take
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