In streaming gold; syringa, iv'ry pure; Now sanguine, and her beauteous head now set With purple spikes pyramidal, as if Studious of ornament, yet unresolv❜d 150 160 Which hue she most approv'd, she chose them all; But well compensating her sickly looks Of flow'rs, like flies clothing her slender rods, With blushing wreaths, investing ev'ry spray; Althea with the purple eye; the broom, 170 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, The grand transition, that there lives and works Where no eye sees them. And the fairer forms, 180 That cultivation glories in, are his. He sets the bright procession on it's way, may not And blunts his pointed fury; in it's case, And, ere one flow'ry season fades and dies, 190 pass, From which they swerve not since. That under force Of that controlling ordinance they move, And need not his immediate hand, who first Thus dream they, and contrive to save a God The great artificer of all that moves The stress of a continual act, the pain As too laborious and severe a task. So vast in it's demands, unless impell'd To ceaseless service by a ceaseless force, 210 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, Whose work is without labour; whose designs And whose beneficence no charge exhausts. Him blind antiquity profan'd, not serv'd, With self-taught rites, and under various names, And Flora, and Vertumnus; peopling Earth 230 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, |