Of horrid prospect, shag the trackless plain :
Nor finds the river, nor the forest, hid
Beneath the formless wild; but wanders on
From hill to dale, still more and more astray;
Impatient flouncing through the drifted heaps,
Stung with the thoughts of home; the thoughts of
home
Rush on his nerves, and call their vigor forth
In many a vain attempt. How sinks his soul!
What black despair, what horror fills his heart!
When for the dusky spot, which fancy feign'd
His tufted cottage rising thro' the snow,
He meets the roughness of the middle waste,
Far from the track, and blest abode of man;
While round him night resistless closes fast,
And every tempest howling o'er his head,
Renders the savage wilderness more wild.
Then throng the busy shapes into his mind
Of cover'd pits, unfathomably deep,
A dire, descent! beyond the power of frost,
Of faithless bogs; of precipices huge,
Smooth'd up with snow; and, what is land, unknown,
What water, of the still unfrozen spring,
In the loose marsh or solitary lake,
Where the fresh fountain from the bottom boils,
These check his fearful steps: and down he sinks
Beneath the shelter of the shapeless drift,
Thinking o'er all the bitterness of death,
Mix'd with the tender anguish Nature shoots
Thro' the wrung bosom of the dying man,
His wife, his children, and his friends unseen.
In vain for him the officious wife
prepares
The fire fair-blazing, and the vestment warm;
In vain his little children, peeping out
Into the mingling storm, demand their sire,
With tears of artless innocence. Alas!
Nor wife, nor children more shall he behold.
Nor friends, nor sacred home. On every nerve
The deadly winter seizes; shuts up sense;
And, o'er his inmost vitals creeping cold,
Lays him along the snows, a stiffened corse,
Stretch'd out, and bleaching in the northern blast.
Ah! happy they! the happiest of their kind!
Whom gentle stars unite, and in one fate
Their hearts, their fortunes, and their beings blend.
Tis not the coarser tie of human laws,
Unnatural oft, and foreign to the mind,
That binds their peace, but harmony itself,
Attuning all their passions into love;
Where friendship full exerts her softest power,
Perfect esteem enlivened by desire
Ineffable, and sympathy of soul;
Thought meeting thought, and will preventing will
With boundless confidence: (for nought but love
Can answer love, and render bliss secure.)
Let him ungenerous, who, alone intent
To bless himself, from sordid parents buys、
The loathing maiden, in eternal care,
Well-merited, consume his nights and days;
Let barbarous nations, whose inhuman love
Is wild desire, fierce as the suns they feel;
Let eastern tyrants, from the light of Heaven
Seclude their bosom slaves, meanly possess'd
Of a mere, lifeless, violated form:
While those whom love cements in holy faith,
And equal transport, free as nature live,
Disdaining fear. What is the world to them,
Its
pomp, its pleasure, and its nonsense all!
Who in each other clasp whatever fair
High fancy forms, and lavish hearts can wish;
Something than beauty dearer, should they look
Or on the mind, or mind-illumin'd face;
Truth, goodness, honor, harmony, and love,
The richest bounty of indulgent Heaven.
Meantime a smiling offspring rises round,
And mingles both their graces. By degrees,
The human blossom blows; and every day,
Soft as it rolls along, shews some new charm,
The father's lustre, and the mother's bloom.
Then infant reason grows apace, and calls
For the kind hand of an assiduous care.
Delightful task! to rear the tender thought,
To teach the young idea how to shoot,
Το pour the fresh instruction o'er the mind,
To breathe th' enlivening spirit, and to fix
The generous purpose in the glowing breast.
Oh speak the joy; ye, whom the sudden tear
Surprises often, while you look around.
And nothing strikes your eye but sights of bliss,
All various Nature pressing on the heart :
An elegant sufficiency, content,
Retirement, rural quiet, friendship, books,
Ease, and alternate labor, useful life,
Progressive virtue, and approving heaven:
These are the matchless joys of virtuous love;
And thus their moments fly. The seasons thus,
As ceaseless round a jarring world they roll,
Still find them happy, and consenting Spring
Sheds her own rosy garland on their heads:
Till evening comes at last, serene and mild ;
When after the long vernal day of life,
Enamor'd more, as more remembrance swells
With many a proof of recollected love,
Together down they sink in social sleep;
Together freed, their gentle spirits fly
To scenes where love and bliss immortal reign.
INFLUENCE OF SPRING ON BIRDS.
When first the soul of love is sent abroad,
-Warm thro' the vital air, and on the heart
Harmonious seizes, the gay troops begin,
In gallant thought, to plume the painted wing,
And try again the long-forgotten strain,
At first faint-warbled. But no sooner grows
The soft infusion prevalent, and wide,
Than, all alive, at once their joy o'erflows
In music unconfin'd. Up springs the lark,
Shrill-voic'd, and loud, the messenger of morn :
Ere yet the shadows fly, he mounted sings
Amid the dawning clouds, and from their haunts
Calls up the tuneful nations. Every copse
Deep-tangled, tree irregular, and bush
Bending with dewy moisture, o'er the heads
Of the coy quiristers that lodge within,
Are prodigal of harmony. The thrush
And wood-lark, o'er the kind contending throng
Superior heard, run thro' the sweetest length
Of notes; when listening Philomela deigns
To let them joy, in purposes, in thought
Elate, to make her night excel their day.
The black-bird whistles from the thorny brake;
The mellow bulfinch answers from the grove:
Nor are the linnets, o'er the flowering furze
Pour'd out profusely, silent. Join'd to these
Innumerous songsters, in the freshening shade
Of new-sprung leaves, their modulation mix
Mellifluous. The jay, the rook, the daw,
And each harsh pipe, discordant heard alone,
Aid the full concert: while the stock-dove breathes
A melancholy murmur thro' the whole.
Connubial leagues agreed, to the deep woods
They haste away, all as their fancy leads,
Pleasure, or food, or secret safety prompts;
That Nature's great command may be obey'd,
Nor all the sweet sensations they perceive
Indulg'd in vain. Some to the holly-hedge
Nestling repair, and to the thicket some;
Some to the rude protection of the thorn
Commit their feeble offspring: the cleft tree
Offers its kind concealment to a few,
Their food its insects, and its moss their nests.
Others apart far in the grassy dale,
Or roughening waste, their humble texture weave.
But most in woodland solitudes delight,
In unfrequented glooms, or shaggy banks,
Steep, and divided by a babbling brook,
Whose murmurs soothe them all the live-long day,
When by kind duty fix'd. Among the roots
Of hazel, pendant o'er the plaintive stream,
They frame the first foundation of their domes,
Dry sprigs of trees, in artful fabric laid,
And bound with clay together. Now 'tis nought
But restless hurry thro' the busy air,
Beat by unnumber'd wings. The swallow sweeps
The slimy pool, to build his hanging house
Intent. And often, from the careless back
Of herds and flocks, a thousand tugging bills
Pluck hair and wool; and oft, when unobserv'd
Steal from the barn a straw; till soft and warın;
Clean, and complete, their habitation grows.
Fifty years hence, and who will hear of Henry?
Oh! none another busy brood of beings
Will shoot up in the interim, and none
Will hold him in remembrance. I shall sink,
As sinks a stranger in the crowded streets
Of busy London ;-some short bustle's caus'd,
A few inquiries, and the crowds close in,
And all's forgotten.-On my grassy grave,
The men of future times will careless tread,
And read my name upon the sculptur'd stone;
Nor will the sound, familiar to their ears,
Recal my vanish'd memory. I did hope
For better things!-I hop'd I should not leave
The earth without a vestige.
Tonly wake to watch the sickly taper
Which lights me to my tomb.-Yes, 'tis the hand
Of Death I feel press heavy on my vitals,
Slow sapping the warm current of existence,
My moments now are few. The sand of life
Ebbs fastly to its finish.-Yet a little,
And the last fleeting particle will fall
Silent, unseen, unnoticed, unlamented.
Come, then, sad thought, and let us meditate,
While meditate we may.
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