Classic Poem

Fair Morn ascends; soft Zephyr's wing
O'er hill and vale renews the spring;
Where sown profusely herb and flower
Of balmy smell, of healing power,
Their souls in fragrant dews exhale,
And breathe fresh life in every gale.
Here spreads a green expanse of plains,
Where sweetly pensive Silence reigns;
And there, at utmost stretch of eye,
A mountain fades into the sky;
While winding round, diffus'd and deep,
A river rolls with sounding sweep.
Of human art no traces near,
I seem alone with Nature here!
Here are thy walks, O sacred Health!
The monarch's bliss, the beggar's wealth,
The seasoning of all good below!
The sovereign friend in joy or woe!
O thou! most courted, most despis'd,
And but in absence duly priz'd!
Pow'r of the soft and rosy face,
The vivid pulse, the vermeil grace,
The spirits when they gayest shine,
Youth, beauty, pleasure, all are thine!
O sum of life! whose heavenly ray
Lights up and cheers our various day,
The turbulence of hopes and fears,
The storm of fate, the cloud of years,
Till Nature, with thy parting light,
Reposes late in Death's calm night:
Fled from the trophied roofs of state,
Abodes of splendid pain and hate;
Fled from the couch where in sweet sleep
Hot Riot would his anguish steep,
But tosses through the midnight shade,
Of death of life alike afraid;
For ever fled to shady cell,
Where Temperance, where the Muses dwell;
Thou oft art seen, at early dawn,
Slow-pacing o'er the breezy lawn;
Or on the brow of mountain high,
In silence feasting ear and eye
With song and prospect, which abound
From birds, and woods, and waters round.
But when the sun, with noontide ray,
Flames forth intolerable day
While Heat sits fervent on the plain,
With Thirst and Langnor in his train,
All Nature sickening in the blaze,
Thou, in the wild and woody maze
That clouds the vale with umbrage deep,
Impendent from the neighbouring steep,
Wilt find betimes a calm retreat,
Where breathing Coolness has her seat.
There plung'd amid the shadows brown,
Imagination lays him down,
Attentive, in his airy mood,
To every murmur of the wood:
The bee in yonder flowery nook,
The chidings of the headlong brook,
The green leaf shivering in the gale,
The warbling hill, the lowing vale,
The distant woodman's echoing stroke,
The thunder of the falling oak:
From thought to thought in vision led.
He holds high converse with the dead,
Sages or poets. See! they rise,
And shadowy skim before his eyes.
Hark! Orpheus strikes the lyre again,
That soften'd savages to men:
Lo, Socrates! the sent of Heav'n,
To whom its moral will was giv'n:
Fathers and friends of human-kind,
They form'd the nations, or refin'd;
With all that mends the head and heart,
Enlightening truth, adorning art.
While thus I mus'd beneath the shade.
At once the sounding breeze was laid,
And Nature, by the unknown law,
Shook deep with reverential awe.
Dumb silence grew upon the hour,
A browner night involv'd the bow'r;
When, issuing from the inmost wood,
Appear'd fair Freedom's genius good.
O Freedom! sovereign boon of Heav'n,
Great charter with our being giv'n.
For which the patriot and the sage
Have plann'd, have bled, through every age!
High privilege of human race,
Beyond a mortal monarch's grace,
Who could not give, nor can reclaim,
What but from God immediate came!