Your garden, 'when by winter blasts destroy'd
Each flower befide is wither'd---droops---and dies.
Here let us pause a-while, to number o'er
The wife and kind designs which heaven has plan'd
In regular fucceffion, to display
The flowery tribes, by turns that fade and bloom,
Some starting into life, while fome expire:
No feafon of the various changing year
Without its beauties.---Did they burst the glebe,
At once unfolding all their mingled hues,
What would the scene appear?
A gay confufion, with united rays
The eye confounding, they were meant to please.
Blended together, with too bright a glare
They pain the fight, unable to compare
Each with the other's beauty, which beheld
Each feparate from each would charm the more,
And give the raptur'd eye a fofter joy.
But here to different claffes are affign'd
Their different ftations and diftinct abodes;
Each blooming after each, allow the eye
Space to admire, to view, and to review,
Their beauties oft, our fenfes to regale,
Now with their luftre, now their rich perfumes:
This orderly array not only gives
Each bed and flower a more diftinguish'd hue,
But to each family imparts a fhare
Of immortality, a conftant bloom,
Which varying, never dies. While thus the year,
Each feafon is replenish'd with a gay
Profufion of delight---as one declines
Its drooping head, another clafs unfolds
Its fpringing foliage, and supplies the room
Of those that time has cover'd with a fhade.
Goodness immenfe! thus kindly to provide
A series of ftill varying joys to feaft
Each human sense, directing every flower
When to expand its leaves, and when to fade.
How priz'd his wisdom and paternal care,
That kind indulgence, which each morning cloaths
Our walks with fofteft verdure, bids our flowers
And gardens with alternate beauties bloom:
This bed all lustre, while the gems
So lately on the next, are all decay'd;
Each family directed when to breathe
Their fweets around, and when to disappear.
No actor on the stage, however fam'd,
His entry or his exit better knows.
Say, whofe perfuafive voice has power to draw
The daffodil from out his bed of snow,
So early to entruft its flow'ring gold
Midft chilling blafts and bleak inclement skies?
Whose wisdom, which informs the various buds
That bloffom on each tree, to wait the time
Till genial funs and vernal showers invite
Each branch, its leaves and beauties to unfold?
Say, who directs and bids the clove conceal
Its spicy fragrance clofe within its cells,
Till fummer funs and warmer beams infuse
A richness in her bofom, and conspire
To tinge her leaves with a deep crimson dye!
Who in fuch order and exact array
Marshal'd these fhining troops, and taught the tribes
Each in their proper season to display
Their regulated beauties, which by turns,
Each after each, now bloffom, now decay,
One class reviving while another fades.
These are his works, the fair unerring plans Of that productive wisdom which compleats
In number, weight, and measure, all it frames,
Quite from the lowest fhrub beyond those scenes
Where angels glitter on their golden thrones.
He tunes the feraph's voice in fongs to hymn
Their great Creator's glory, nor difdains
The meaneft worm or infect that by turns
Crawl in the duft or flutter in the air :
• "Tis he marks out the shining path where roll
The golden globes of light along the skies,
Nor yet forgetting from its humble bed
To rear the violet, or to paint the rose,
With mingling beauties to adorn the plain.
If fummer, like a sparkling bride appears,
Bedeck'd in gayeft robes and rich array,
What do we here behold but feeble rays
Of that divine effulgence from his eye,
Pour'd out e'er yet creation's beauties dawn'd?
If yellow autumn's crowning the rich glebe
With loaded harvefts, to impart a joy,
And glad the heart of man; we here admire
Heaven's bounty ftreaming ftill, ftill unconfum'd.
When the loud thunders roar and cleave the air,
In the dread blaft you hear his trumpets found,
Amazing, while they rattle.--In the blaze
The light'nings dart around, kindling the skies
With forked fires; trembling you view the spears
Launch'd from his angry hand, with terrors arm'd;
When fhook from off their base th' eternal hills
Like duft are scatter'd, rocking too and fro
Their bending frighted tops whene'er he frowns,
Here rev'rence and adore that awful power
That shakes the mountains---yet not half reveal'd.
From heaven's bright wonders, scenes above the skies,
The mufe defcends, delighted to pursue
Her rural labours; here fhe firft furveys
The juft arrangement of each plant and flower,
The various colonies, whose bloom adorns
Our gay parterre with one unfading blaze:
Their ftructure finish'd with so nice a care
Of nature's curious hand, the smallest change
Or alteration greatly would impair
Their regular perfection, serve to shade
Those beauties only which they strive to mend.
Say, fhould the tulip's leaves, her rich attire,
Irregular and wanton fly abroad,
Juft like the flaunting woodbine's rambling boughs,
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