But with instinctive love is dress'd
The Eider's downy cradle; where
The mother-bird her glossy breast
Devotes, and, with maternal care
And plumeless bosom, stems the toiling seas
That foam round the tempestuous Orcades.
From heights, whence shuddering sense recoils,
And cloud-capp'd headlands, steep and bare,
Sons of the North! your venturous toils
Collect your poor and scanty fare.
Urged by imperious Want, you dare
Scale the loose cliff where gannets hide,
Or, scarce suspended, in the air
Hang perilous; and thus provide
The soft voluptuous couch, which not secures
To Luxury's pamper'd minions sleep like yours.
Revolving still, the waves that now
Just ripple on the level shore
Have borne perchance the Indian's prow,
Or half congeal'd, mid ice rocks hoar,
Raved to the Walrus' hollow roar;
Or have, by currents swift, convey'd
To the cold coast of Labrador
The relics of the tropic shade;
And to the wondering Esquimaux have shown
Leaves of strange shape,and fruits unlike their own.
No more then let the' incurious say,
No change this world of water shows,
But as the tides the moon obey,
Or tempests rave, or calms repose.
Show them, its bounteous breast bestows
On myriads life; and bid them see
In every wave that circling flows
Beauty and use and harmony
Works of the Power Supreme, who pour'd the flood Round the green peopled earth, and call'd it good!
THE gorse is yellow on the heath,
The banks with speedwell flowers are gay,
The oaks are budding, and beneath
The hawthorn soon will bear the wreath,
The silver wreath of May.
The welcome guest of settled spring,
The swallow, too is come at last;
Just at sunset, when thrushes sing,
I saw her dash with rapid wing,
And hail'd her as she pass'd.
Come, summer visitant, attach
To my reed roof your nest of clay,
And let my ear your music catch,
Low twittering underneath the thatch
At the gray dawn of day.
As fables tell, an Indian sage,
The Hindostani woods among,
Could, in his desert hermitage,
As if 'twere mark'd in written page,
Translate the wild bird's song.
I wish I did his power possess,
That I might learn, fleet bird, from thee, What our vain systems only guess,
And know from what wide wilderness
You came across the sea.
I would a little while restrain
Your rapid wing that might hear
Whether on clouds, that bring the rain,
You sail'd above the western main,
The wind your charioteer.
In Afric does the sultry gale
Through spicy bower and palmy grove Bear the repeated cuckoo's tale? Dwells there a time the wandering quail, Or the itinerant dove?
Were you in Asia? O, relate
If there your fabled sister's woes
She seem'd in sorrow to narrate;
Or sings she but to celebrate
Her nuptials with the rose,
I would inquire how, journeying long
The vast and pathless ocean o'er,
You ply again those pinions strong,
And come to build anew among
The scenes you left before;
But if, as colder breezes blow,
Prophetic of the waning year,
You hide, though none know when or how,
In the cliff's excavated brow,
And linger torpid here;
Thus to life, what favouring dream
Bids you to happier hours awake,
And tells that, dancing in the beam,
The light gnat hovers o'er the stream,
The Mayfly on the lake.
Or if, by instinct taught to know,
Approaching dearth of insect food,
To isles and willowy aits you go,
And, crowding on the pliant bough,
Sink in the dimpling flood,
How learn ye, while the cold waves boom
Your deep and oozy couch above,
The time when flowers of promise bloom,
And call you from your transient tomb,
To light and life and love?
Alas! how little can be known
Her sacred veil where Nature draws!
Let baffled Science humbly own,
Her mysteries understood alone
By Him who gives her laws.
RELIGION.
A Simile.
I'm often drawn to make a stop,
And gaze upon a picture shop.
There have I seen (as who that tarries
Has not the same) a head that varies;
And, as in different views exposed,
A different figure is disclosed,
This way a fool's head is express'd,
Whose very countenance is a jest;
Such as were formerly at court,
Kept to make wiser people sport.
Turn it another way, you'll have
A face ridiculously grave,
Something betwixt the fool and knave.
Again but alter the position,
You're frighted with the apparition:
A hideous threatening Gorgon head
Appears, enough to fright the dead;
But place it in its proper light,
A lovely face accosts the sight;
Our eyes are charm'd with every feature, We own the whole a beauteous creature. For when
Thus true religion fares.
By silly or designing men
In false or foolish lights 'tis placed,
"Tis made a bugbear or a jest.
Here, by a set of men, 'tis thought
A scheme, by politicians wrought,
To strengthen and enforce the law,
And keep the vulgar more in awe:
And these, to show sublimer parts,
Cast all religion from their hearts;
Brand all its votaries as the tools
Of priests and politician's fools.
Some view it in another light,
Less wicked, but as foolish quite :
And these are such as blindly place it
In superstitions that disgrace it;
And think the essence of it lies
In ceremonious fooleries;
|