In streaming gold; syringa, iv'ry pure;
The scentless and the scented rose; this red,
And of an humbler growth, the other tall,
And throwing up into the darkest gloom
Of neighb'ring cypress, or more sable yew,
Her silver globes, light as the foamy surf,
That the wind severs from the broken wave;
The lilac, various in array, now white,

Now sanguine, and her beauteous head now set

With purple spikes pyramidal, as if

Studious of ornament, yet unresolv❜d

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160

Which hue she most approv'd, she chose them all;
Copious of flow'rs the woodbine, pale and wan,

But well compensating her sickly looks
With never-cloying odours, early and late;
Hypericum all bloom, so thick a swarm

Of flow'rs, like flies clothing her slender rods,
That scarce a leaf appears; mezereon too,
Though leafless, well attir'd, and thick beset

With blushing wreaths, investing ev'ry spray;

Althea with the purple eye; the broom,

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Yellow and bright, as bullion unalloy'd,

Her blossoms; and luxuriant above all

The jasmine, throwing wide her elegant sweets, The deep dark green of whose unvarnish'd leaf Makes more conspicuous, and illumines more The bright profusion of her scatter'd stars.— These have been, and these shall be in their day:

And all this uniform uncolour'd scene

Shall be dismantled of it's fleecy load,

And flush into variety again.

From dearth to plenty, and from death to life,
Is Nature's progress, when she lectures man
In heav'nly truth: evincing, as she makes

The grand transition, that there lives and works
A soul in all things, and that soul is God.
The beauties of the wilderness are his,
That makes so gay the solitary place,

Where no eye sees them. And the fairer forms,

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That cultivation glories in, are his.

He sets the bright procession on it's way,
And marshals all the order of the year;
He marks the bounds, which Winter

may not

And blunts his pointed fury; in it's case,
Russet and rude, folds up the tender germe,
Uninjur'd, with inimitable art;

And, ere one flow'ry season fades and dies,
Designs the blooming wonders of the next.

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pass,

From which they swerve not since. That under force

Of that controlling ordinance they move,

And need not his immediate hand, who first
Prescrib'd their course, to regulate it now.

Thus dream they, and contrive to save a God
Th' incumbrance of his own concerns, and spare

The great artificer of all that moves

The stress of a continual act, the pain
Of unremitted vigilance and care,

As too laborious and severe a task.
So man, the moth, is not afraid, it seems,
To span omnipotence, and measure might,
That knows no measure, by the scanty rule
And standard of his own, that is to day,
And is not ere to morrow's sun go down.
But how should matter occupy a charge,
Dull as it is, and satisfy a law

So vast in it's demands, unless impell'd

To ceaseless service by a ceaseless force,

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And under pressure of some conscious cause? 220

The Lord of all, himself through all diffus'd,

Sustains, and is the life of all that lives..

Nature is but a name for an effect,

Whose cause is God, He feeds the secret fire,

By which the mighty process is maintain❜d,
Who sleeps not, is not weary; in whose sight
Slow circling ages are as transient days;

Whose work is without labour; whose designs
No flaw deforms, no difficulty thwarts;

And whose beneficence no charge exhausts.

Him blind antiquity profan'd, not serv'd,

With self-taught rites, and under various names,
Female and male, Pomona, Pales, Pan,

And Flora, and Vertumnus; peopling Earth
With tutelary goddesses and gods,

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That were not; and commending as they would To each some province, garden, field, or grove. But all are under one. One spirit-His,

Who wore the platted thorns with bleeding brows, Rules universal nature. Not a flow'r

240

But shows some touch, in freckle, streak, or stain,

Of his unrivall'd pencil. He inspires

Their balmy odours, and imparts their hues,
And bathes their eyes with nectar, and includes,
In grains as countless as the seaside sands,
The forms, with which he sprinkles all the Earth.
Happy who walks with him! whom what he finds