HYMN.

  These, as they change, Almighty Father, these
  Are but the varied God.  The rolling year
  Is full of thee.  Forth in the pleasing Spring
  Thy beauty walks, thy tenderness and love. 
  Wide flush the fields; the softening air is balm;
  Echo the mountains round; the forest smiles;
  And every sense and every heart is joy. 
  Then comes thy glory in the Summer months,
  With light and heat refulgent.  Then thy sun
  Shoots full perfection through the swelling year
  And oft thy voice in dreadful thunder speaks,
  And oft at dawn, deep noon, or falling eve,
  By brooks and groves, in hollow-whispering gales.[159]
  A yellow-floating pomp, thy bounty shines
  In Autumn unconfined.  Thrown from thy lap,
  Profuse o’er nature, falls the lucid shower
  Of beamy fruits; and, in a radiant stream,
  Into the stores of sterile Winter pours. 
  In winter awful thou! with clouds and storms
  Around thee thrown—­tempest o’er tempest rolled. 
  Majestic darkness! on the whirlwind’s wing
  Riding sublime, thou bidst the world adore,[160]
  And humblest nature with thy northern blast.

  Mysterious round! what skill, what force divine
  Deep felt, in these appear! a simple train,
  Yet so delightful mixed, with such kind art,
  Such beauty and beneficence combined! 
  Shade unperceived so softening into shade! 
  And all so forming an harmonious whole,
  That, as they still succeed, they ravish still.

* * * * *

  Nature attend!  Join, every living soul,
  Beneath the spacious temple of the sky—­
  In adoration join; and, ardent, raise
  One general song!  To him, ye vocal gales,
  Breathe soft, whose spirit in your freshness breathes;
  Oh! talk of him in solitary glooms,
  Where, o’er the rock, the scarcely waving pine
  Fills the brown shade with a religious awe;
  And ye, whose bolder note is heard afar,
  Who shake the astonished world, lift high to heaven
  The impetuous song, and say from whom you rage. 
  His praise, ye brooks, attune,—­ye trembling rills,
  And let me catch it as I muse along. 
  Ye headlong torrents, rapid and profound;
  Ye softer floods, that lead the humid maze
  Along the vale; and thou, majestic main,
  A secret world of wonders in thyself,
  Sound his stupendous praise, whose greater voice
  Or bids you roar, or bids your roarings fall. 
  Soft roll your incense, herbs, and fruits, and flowers,
  In mingled clouds to him whose sun exalts,
  Whose breath perfumes you, and whose pencil paints. 
  Ye forests, bend, ye harvests, wave to him;
  Breathe your still song into the reaper’s heart,
  As home he goes beneath the joyous moon.

* * * * *

  Bleat out afresh, ye hills! ye mossy rocks,
  Retain the sound; the broad responsive low,
  Ye valleys raise; for the great Shepherd reigns,
  And his unsuffering kingdom yet will come.