To him they sing when Spring renews the plain,
To him they cry in Winter's pinching reign;
Nor is their music, nor their plaint in vain
He hears the gay and the distressful call,
And with unsparing bounty fills them all.
Observe the rising lily's snowy grace;
Observe the various vegetable race;
They neither toil nor spin, but careless grow ;
Yet see how warm they blush! how bright they
What regal vestments can with them compare? 30
What king so shining, and what queen so fair?
If ceaseless thus the fowls of heaven he feeds,
If o'er the fields such lucid robes he spreads;
Will he not care for you, ye faithless, say?
Is he unwise? or are ye less than they?'
ON THE REPORT OF A WOODEN BRIDGE
TO BE BUILT AT WESTMINSTER
By Rufus' hall, where Thames polluted flows,
Provoked, the Genius of the river rose,
And thus exclaimed: Have I, ye British swains,
Have I for ages laved your fertile plains?
Given herds, and flocks, and villages increase,
And fed a richer than the golden fleece?
Have I, ye merchants, with each swelling tide,
Poured Afric's treasure in, and India's pride?
Lent you the fruit of every nation's toil?
Made every climate yours, and every soil?
Yet, pilfered from the poor, by gaming base,
Yet must a wooden bridge my waves disgrace?
Tell not to foreign streams the shameful tale,
And be it published in no Gallic vale.'
He said; and, plunging to his crystal dome,
White o'er his head the circling waters foam.
[These lines appeared in The Gentleman's Magazine, 1737.]
THE WORKS AND WONDERS OF
ALMIGHTY POWER
Now I surveyed my native faculties,
And traced my actions to their teeming source.
Now I explored the universal frame;
Gazed nature through, and with interior light
Conversed with angels and unbodied saints,
That tread the courts of the Eternal King!
Gladly would I declare, in lofty strains,
The power of Godhead to the sons of men.
But thought is lost in its immensity;
Imagination wastes its strength in vain;
And fancy tires, and turns within itself,
Struck with the amazing depths of Deity!
Ah! my loved God! in vain a tender youth
Unskilled in arts of deep philosophy,
Attempts to search the bulky mass of matter;
To trace the rules of motion; and pursue
The phantom Time, too subtile for his grasp !
Yet may I, from thy most apparent works,
Form some idea of their wondrous Author,
And celebrate thy praise with rapturous mind! 20
How can I gaze upon yon sparkling vault,
And view the planets rolling in their spheres,
Yet be an atheist? Can I see those stars,
And think of others far beyond my ken,
Yet want conviction of creating power?
What but a Being of immense perfection
Could, through unbounded spaces, thus dispose
Such numerous bodies, all presumptive worlds?
The undesigning hand of giddy chance
Could never fill, with globes so vast, so bright, 30
That lofty concave !
Where shall I trace the sources of the light?
What seats assign the element of fire,
That, unconfined, through all the systems breaks?
Here could I lie, in holy contemplation rapt,
And pass with pleasure an eternal age!
But 'tis too much for my weak mind to know.
Teach me with humble reverence to adore
The mysteries I must not comprehend!
A PARAPHRASE OF PSALM CIV
To praise thy Author, Soul, do not forget;
Canst thou, in gratitude, deny the debt?
Lord, thou art great, how great we cannot know;
Honour and majesty do round thee flow.
The purest rays of primogenial light
Compose thy robes, and make them dazzling bright;
The heavens and all the wide-spread orbs on high
Thou like a curtain stretched of curious dye;
On the devouring flood thy chambers are
Established; a lofty cloud's thy car,
Which quick through the ethereal road doth fly
On swift-winged winds that shake the troubled sky.
Of spiritual substance angels thou didst frame,
Active and bright, piercing and quick as flame.
Thou hast firmly founded this unwieldy earth;
Stand fast for aye, thou saidst, at nature's birth.
The swelling flood thou o'er the earth mad'st creep,
And coveredst it with the vast hoary deep :
Then hills and vales did no distinction know,
But levelled nature lay oppressed below.
With speed they, at thy awful thunder's roar,
Shrinked within the limits of their shore.
Through secret tracts they up the mountains creep,
And rocky caverns fruitful moisture weep,
Which sweetly through the verdant vales doth glide,
Till 'tis devoured by the greedy tide.
The feeble sands thou hast made the ocean's mounds;
Its foaming waves shall ne'er repass these bounds,
Again to triumph over the dry grounds.
Between the hills, grazed by the bleating kind, 30
Soft warbling rills their mazy way do find-
By him appointed fully to supply,
When the hot dogstar fires the realms on high,
The raging thirst of every sickening beast,
Of the wild ass that roams the dreary waste.
The feathered nation, by their smiling sides,
In lowly brambles or in trees abides;
By nature taught, on them they rear their nests,
That with inimitable art are dressed.
They for the shade and safety of the wood
With natural music cheer the neighbourhood.
He doth the clouds with genial moisture fill,
Which on the [shr]ivelled ground they bounteously
distil,
And nature's lap with various blessings crowd:
The giver, God! all creatures cry aloud.
With freshest green he clothes the fragrant mead,
Whereon the grazing herds wanton and feed.
With vital juice he makes the plants abound,
And herbs securely spring above the ground,
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