C

Nor moral excellence, nor social bliss,
Nor guardian law were his; nor various skill
To turn the furrow, or to guide the tool
Mechanic; nor the heaven-conducted prow
Of navigation bold, that fearless braves
The burning line or dares the wintry pole;
Mother severe of infinite delights!
Nothing, fave rapine, indolence, and guile,
And woes on woes, a still-revolving train!
Whose horrid circle had made human life
Than nonexistence worse: but, taught by thee,
Ours are the plans of policy, and peace ; .
To live like brothers, and conjunctive all
Embellish life. While thus laborious crowds
Ply the tough oar, Philosophy directs
The ruling helm; or like the liberal breath
Of potent Heaven, invisible, the fail
Swells out, and bears th’inferior world along,

Nor to this evanescent speck of earth
Poorly confin'd, the radiant tracts on high
Are her exalted range; intent to gaze
Creation thro'; and, from that full complex
Of never-ending wonders, to conceive
Of the Sole Being right, who spoke the Word,
And Nature mov'd complete. With inward view,

Thence on th' ideal kingdom swift she turns
Her eye; and instant, at her powerful glance,
Th’obedient phantoms vanish or appear ;
Compound, divide, and into order shift,
Each to his rank, from plain perception up
To the fair forms of Fancy's fleeting train :
To reason then, deducing truth from truth ;
And notion quite abstract; where first begins
The world of spirits, action all, and life
Unfetter'd, and unmix'd. But here the cloud,
So wills ETERNAL PROVIDENCE, fits deep.
Enough for us to know that this dark state,
In wayward passions loft, and vain pursuits,
This Infancy of Being, cannot prove
The final Issue of the works of God,
By boundless Love and perfect Wisdom form’d,
And ever rising with the rising mind,

A U T U M N.

THE ARGUMENT.

The subject proposed. Addressed to Mr. ONSLOW. A prospect

of the fields ready for harvest. Reflections in praise of industry raised by that view. Reaping. A tale relative to it. A harvest storm. Shooting and hunting, their barbarity. A ludicrous account of fox-hunting. A view of an orchard. Wallfruit. A vineyard. A description of fogs, frequent in the latter part of Autumn : whence a digression, enquiring into the rise of fountains and rivers. Birds of season considered, that now shift their habitation. The prodigious number of them that cover the northern and western isles of SCOTLAND. Hence a view of the country. A prospect of the discoloured, fading woods. After a gentle dusky day, moon-light. Autumnal meteors. Morning: to which succeeds a calm, pure, sun-hiny day, such as usually shuts up the season. The harvest being gathered in, the country dissolved in joy. The whole concludes with a panegyric on a philosophical couns try-life.