spring

To Thomas Pennant, Esquire.

... equidem credo, quia sit divinitus illis
Ingenium.
Virg., Georg.


When day declining sheds a milder gleam,
What time the may-fly haunts the pool or stream;
When the still owl skims round the grassy mead,
What time the timorous hare limps forth to feed;
Then be the time to steal adown the vale,
And listen to the vagrant cuckoo's tale;
To hear the clamorous curlew call his mate,
Or the soft quail his tender pain relate;

Behold the father is his daughter's son,
The bird that built the nest is hatched therein,
The old of years an hour hath not outrun,
Eternal life to live doth now begin,
The Word is dumb, the mirth of heaven doth weep,
Might feeble is, and force doth faintly creep.

O dying souls, behold your living spring;
O dazzled eyes, behold your sun of grace;
Dull ears, attend what word this Word doth bring;
Up, heavy hearts, with joy your joy embrace.
From death, from dark, from deafness, from despairs

Through field and wood to stray,
And pipe my tuneful lay,--

'Tis thus my days are pass'd;
And all keep tune with me,
And move in harmony,

And so on, to the last.

To wait I scarce have power
The garden's earliest flower,

The tree's first bloom in Spring;
They hail my joyous strain,--
When Winter comes again,

Of that sweet dream I sing.

My song sounds far and near,
O'er ice it echoes clear,

Then Winter blossoms bright;
And when his blossoms fly,

In the deepest nights of Winter
To the Muses kind oft cried I:
"Not a ray of morn is gleaming,
Not a sign of daylight breaking;
Bring, then, at the fitting moment,
Bring the lamp's soft glimm'ring lustre,
'Stead of Phoebus and Aurora,
To enliven my still labours!"
Yet they left me in my slumbers,
Dull and unrefreshing, lying,
And to each late-waken'd morning
Follow'd days devoid of profit.

When at length return'd the spring-time,
To the nightingales thus spake I:
"Darling nightingales, oh, beat ye

With their harsh leaves old rhododendrons fill
The crevices in grave plots' broken stones.
The bees renew the blossoms they destroy,
While in the burning air the pines rise still,
Commemorating long forgotten biers.
Their roots replace the semblance of these bones.

The weight of cool, of imperceptible dust
That came from nothing and to nothing came
Is light within the earth and on the air.
The change that so renews itself is just.
The enormous, sundry platitude of death

O! The spring-time of life is the season of blooming,
And the morning of love is the season of joy;
Ere noontide and summer, with radiance consuming,
Look down on their beauty, to parch and destroy.
0! faint are the blossoms life's pathway adorning,
When the first magic glory of hope is withdrawn;
For the flowers of the spring, and the light of the morning,
Have no summer budding, and no second dawn.

Through meadows all sunshine, and verdure, and flowers
The stream of the valley in purity flies;

You mustn't groom an Arab with a file.
You hadn't ought to tension-spring a mule.
You couldn't push a brumby fifty mile
And drop him in a boiler-shed to cool.
I'll sling you through six counties in a day.
I'll hike you up a grade of one in ten.
I am Duty, Law and Order under way,
I'm the Mentor of banana-fingered men!
I will make you I know your left hand from your right.
I will teach you not to drink about your biz.
I'm the only temperance advocate in sight!

Now can you see the monument? It is of wood
built somewhat like a box. No. Built
like several boxes in descending sizes
one above the other.
Each is turned half-way round so that
its corners point toward the sides
of the one below and the angles alternate.
Then on the topmost cube is set
a sort of fleur-de-lys of weathered wood,
long petals of board, pierced with odd holes,
four-sided, stiff, ecclesiastical.
From it four thin, warped poles spring out,
(slanted like fishing-poles or flag-poles)

'Tis midnight: the sky is with clouds overcast;
The forest-trees bend in the loud-rushing blast;
The rain strongly beats on these time-hallow'd spires;
The lightning pours swiftly its blue-pointed fires;
Triumphant the tempest-fiend rides in the dark,
And howls round the old abbey-walls of St. Mark!

The thunder, whose roaring the trav'ller appals,
Seems as if with the ground it would level the walls:
But in vain pours the storm-king this horrible rout;
The uproar within drowns the uproar without;

Thou art confused, my beloved, at, seeing the thousandfold union

Shown in this flowery troop, over the garden dispers'd;
any a name dost thou hear assign'd; one after another

Falls on thy list'ning ear, with a barbarian sound.
None resembleth another, yet all their forms have a likeness;

Therefore, a mystical law is by the chorus proclaim'd;
Yes, a sacred enigma! Oh, dearest friend, could I only

Happily teach thee the word, which may the mystery solve!
Closely observe how the plant, by little and little progressing,