Classic Poem

YE Dew and Rain!
How pleasant is your task, who, hand in hand,
Tend the green innocent herbs
With your blest ministerings!

Dear brethren are ye both;
But dearer thou, O Dew, the elder born!
For later came the rain,
Rough in his ways, and sometimes harmful found,
As suits a ruin'd world.
But the soft dew, it is a patient thing,
Quiet of spirit, ever doing good,
At no time harm;
And pitiful for man and nature's fall;
Ministering unseen, through midnight hours,
To fainting mortal things!
Offspring of Eden days!
In whose clear globe
Eden is faintly seen reflected still!

Yet pleasant, too, art thou, O Rain, at times;
And there has been, when I have lov'd to sit
On some high crag,
Watching thine armies scour
The breadth of vale below;
As, troop by troop, they swept
With cloudy flags unfurl'd,
Muster'd in distant climes,—
Or wild Norwegia, or Siberian waste,
Or melting Polar snows,
Atlantic deep, or wizard Egypt's shore,—
Children of many lands and many tongues,
Under one law,
United each with each,
In solemn contract of self-sacrifice,
To fertilise the world with their sweet blood!

O Dews! O Showers!
Praise Him, who you ordain'd;
Praise Him with me, and I with you,
Friends of mYearly days!
And God forefend
Judea's lot be thine, dear British Land!
Though stain'd with guilt of deadliest sacrilege,
Yet not as yet of God forsaken quite.
A glorious clime was hers,
Nurtur'd in morning dew and evening shower,
The promise of her Lord.
But O, her children slew their Lord;
And evermore since then,
Up from the guilty soil His Blood hath cried,
And year by year her Heav'n hath dried o'erhead,
Till all her sky is brass;
Nor dew nor rain descend,
Save where, in nook forlorn,
Faith, far retiring,
The penitent tear outpours
For Sion's evil deeds;
There still, they say, the golden flow'ret springs,
The rain-drops fall,
And balmy dews distil;
To show that e'en in vengeance mercy lives!