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From hill or streaming lake, dusky or gray,
Till the sun paints your fleecy skirts with gold,
In honour to the world's great Author rise:
Whether to deck with clouds th' uncolour'd sky,
Or wet the thirsty earth with falling showers,
Rising or falling, still advance his praise.
His praise, ye winds! that from four quarters blow,
Breathe soft or loud; and wave your tops, ye pines!
With every plant, in sign of worship wave.
Fountains! and ye, that warble as ye flow,
Melodious murmurs! warbling, tune his praise.
Join voices, all ye living souls! ye birds,
That, singing, up to heaven's gate ascend,
Bear on your wings and in your notes his praise.
Ye that in waters glide, and ye that walk
The earth, and stately tread or lowly creep!
Witness if I be silent morn or even,

To hill or valley, fountain or fresh shade,
Made vocal by my song, and taught his praise.
Hail, universal Lord! be bounteous still
To give us only good and if our minds
Have gather'd aught of error or of vice,
Disperse it, as now light dispels the dark.

XXII.

A WOOD-NOTE.

COME уe, come ye, to the green, green wood;
Loudly the blackbird is singing,

The squirrel is feasting on blossom and bud,
And the curlew fern is springing :

Here ye may sleep

In the moss so deep,

While the noon is so warm and so weary,

And sweetly awake

As the sun through the brake

Bids the fauvette and white-throat sing cheery.

The quicken is tufted with blossoms of snow,
And is throwing its perfume around it;
The wryneck replies to the cuckoo's halloo,
For joy that again she has found it;
The jay's red breast

Peeps over his nest,

In the midst of the crab-blossoms blushing;

And the call of the pheasant

Is frequent and pleasant,

When all other calls are hushing.

XXIII.

THE MOSS ROSE.

THE Angel of the flowers, one day,
Beneath a rose-tree sleeping lay,—

That Spirit, to whose charge is given
To bathe young buds in dews from heaven :
Awaking from his light repose,

The Angel whisper'd to the Rose,—
"O fondest object of my care,

Still fairest found where all are fair,

For the sweet shade thou'st given to me,
Ask what thou wilt, 'tis granted thee."
"Then," said the Rose, with deepen'd glow,
"On me another grace bestow."

The Spirit paused, in silent thought,
What grace was there that flower had not?
'Twas but a moment-o'er the Rose
A veil of moss the Angel throws,
And, robed in Nature's simplest weed,
Could there a flower that Rose exceed?

XXIV.

THE VOICE OF SPRING.

I COME, I come! ye have call'd me long,
I come o'er the mountains with light and song!
Ye may trace my step o'er the wakening earth,
By the winds which tell of the violet's birth,
By the primrose stars in the shadowy grass,
By the green leaves opening as I pass.

I have breathed on the South, and the chestnutflowers,

By thousands, have burst from the forest-bowers,
And the ancient graves, and the fallen fanes,
Are veil'd with wreaths on Italian plains.
-But it is not for me, in my hour of bloom,
To speak of the ruin or the tomb!

I have pass'd o'er the hills of the stormy North,
And the larch has hung all his tassels forth,
The fisher is out on the sunny sea,

And the rein-deer bounds through the pasture free,
And the pine has a fringe of softer green,
And the moss looks bright where my step has been.

I have sent through the wood-paths a gentle sigh,
And call'd out each voice of the deep-blue sky,

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