The stealing shower is scarce to patter heard,
By such as wander through the forest walks,
Beneath the umbrageous multitude of leaves.

But who can hold the shade, while heaven descends
In universal bounty, shedding herbs,

And fruits, and flowers, on Nature's ample lap?
Swift fancy fired anticipates their growth;

And, while the milky nutriment distils,
Beholds the kindling country colour round.
Thus all day long the full-distended clouds
Indulge their genial stores, and well-showered earth
Is deep enriched with vegetable life;

Till, in the western sky, the downward sun
Looks out, effulgent, from amid the flush
Of broken clouds, gay-shifting to his beam.
The rapid radiance instantaneous strikes

The illumined mountain; through the forest streams;
Shakes on the floods; and in a yellow mist,

Far smoking o'er the interminable plain,
In twinkling myriads lights the dewy gems,

Moist, bright, and green, the landscape laughs around.
Full swell the woods; their every music wakes,
Mixed in wild concert, with the warbling brooks
Increased, the distant bleatings of the hills,
And hollow lows responsive from the vales,
Whence blending all the sweetened zephyr springs.
Meantime, refracted from yon eastern cloud,
Bestriding earth, the grand ethereal bow
Shoots up immense; and every hue unfolds,

In fair proportion running from the red

To where the violet fades into the sky.
Here, awful Newton, the dissolving clouds
Form, fronting on the sun, thy showery prism;
And to the sage-instructed eye unfold

The various twine of light, by thee disclosed.
From the white mingling maze.

Not so the swain.

He wondering views the bright enchantment bend,
Delightful, o'er the radiant fields, and runs
To catch the falling glory; but amazed
Beholds the amusive arch before him fly,
Then vanish quite away. Still night succeeds,
A softened shade; and saturated earth
Awaits the morning-beam, to give to light,

Raised through ten thousand different plastic tubes,
The balmy treasures of the former day.

Then spring the living herbs profusely wild, O'er all the deep-green earth, beyond the power Of botanist to number up their tribes : Whether he steals along the lonely dale, In silent search; or through the forest, rank With what the dull incurious weeds account, Bursts his blind way; or climbs the mountain-rock, Fired by the nodding verdure of its brow. With such a liberal hand has Nature flung Their seeds abroad, blown them about in winds, Innumerous mixed them with the nursing mould, The moistening current, and prolific rain.

But who their virtues can declare? who pierce, With vision pure, into these secret stores Of health, and life, and joy? the food of man,

While yet he lived in innocence, and told
A length of golden years, unfleshed in blood;
A stranger to the savage arts of life,

Death, rapine, carnage, surfeit, and disease—
The lord, and not the tyrant, of the world.

The first fresh dawn then waked the gladdened race Of uncorrupted man, nor blushed to see

The sluggard sleep beneath its sacred beam;
For their light slumbers gentle fumed away,
And up they rose as vigorous as the sun,
Or to the culture of the willing glebe,
Or to the cheerful tendance of the flock.
Meantime the song went round; and dance and sport,
Wisdom and friendly talk, successive stole

Their hours away: while in the rosy vale

Love breathed his infant sighs, from anguish free,

And full replete with bliss; save the sweet pain,

That, inly thrilling, but exalts it more.

Nor yet injurious act, nor surly deed,

Was known among those happy sons of heaven;
For reason and benevolence were law.
Harmonious Nature too looked smiling on.
Clear shone the skies, cooled with eternal gales,
And balmy spirit all. The youthful sun
Shot his best rays, and still the gracious clouds
Dropped fatness down; as o'er the swelling mead,
The herds and flocks, commixing, played secure.
This when, emergent from the gloomy wood,
The glaring lion saw, his horrid heart

Was meekened, and he joined his sullen joy;

For music held the whole in perfect peace:
Soft sighed the flute; the tender voice was heard,
Warbling the varied heart; the woodlands round.
Applied their quire; and winds and waters flowed
In consonance. Such were those prime of days.

But now those white unblemished minutes, whence
The fabling poets took their golden age,

Are found no more amid these iron times,
These dregs of life! Now the distempered mind
Has lost that concord of harmonious powers,
Which forms the soul of happiness; and all
Is off the poise within the passions all

Have burst their bounds; and reason half extinct,
Or impotent, or else approving, sees

The foul disorder. Senseless and deformed,
Convulsive anger storms at large; or, pale
And silent, settles into fell revenge.
Base envy withers at another's joy,
And hates that excellence it cannot reach.
Desponding fear, of feeble fancies full,
Weak and unmanly, loosens every power.
Even love itself is bitterness of soul,
A pensive anguish pining at the heart;
Or, sunk to sordid interest, feels no more
That noble wish, that never cloyed desire,
Which, selfish joy disdaining, seeks alone
To bless the dearer object of its flame.
Hope sickens with extravagance; and grief,
Of life impatient, into madness swells,

Or in dead silence wastes the weeping hours.

These, and a thousand mixed emotions more,
From ever-changing views of good and ill,
Formed infinitely various, vex the mind

With endless storm; whence, deeply rankling, grows
The partial thought, a listless unconcern,

Cold, and averting from our neighbour's good;
Then dark disgust, and hatred, winding wiles,
Coward deceit, and ruffian violence.

At last, extinct each social feeling, fell
And joyless inhumanity pervades

And petrifies the heart. Nature disturbed.

Is deemed, vindictive, to have changed her course
Hence, in old dusky time, a deluge came :
When the deep-cleft disparting orb, that arched
The central waters round, impetuous rushed,
With universal burst, into the gulph,
And o'er the high-piled hills of fractured earth.
Wide-dashed the waves, in undulation vast;
Till, from the centre to the streaming clouds,
A shoreless ocean tumbled round the globe.

The Seasons since have, with severer sway,
Oppressed a broken world: the Winter keen
Shook forth his waste of snows; and Summer shot

His pestilential heats. Great Spring, before,
Greened all the year; and fruits and blossoms blushed,
In social sweetness, on the self-same bough.

Pure was the temperate air; an even calm

Perpetual reigned, save what the zephyrs bland

Breathed o'er the blue expanse: for then nor storms

Were taught to blow, nor hurricanes to rage;