Thou, Lord, vouchsafe to bless our land,
And every work we take in hand;
That so with lifted hands we may
Return Thee praises night and day.
HEN conqueror Death's unsparing dart
Cuts down the young and gay,
We gaze, alas! with bleeding heart
On beauty's swift decay.
We mourn their early fate-yet why?
They rest in dreamless sleep;
Where aching hearts no longer sigh,
And woe forgets to weep.
Why should our fainting spirits dread
The silence of the tomb;
Where flowers but lay the drooping head,
To rise in brighter bloom?
The struggle and the fear to die
May e'en appal the brave;
But they, who husht in slumber lie,
Have triumphed o'er the grave.
Blest are the dead, who die in youth;
They know nor doubt nor fear:
Alas! I mourn with greater truth
For those who sorrow here.
The horror and the dread of death
Are heavier than the pain :
Loath to resign his fleeting breath,
Man struggles, but in vain.
We live to toil, and weep, and sigh
O'er each departed friend;
We gently close th' expiring eye,
And all our sorrows end.
Why should we mourn that life is brief?
Life is the day of pain:
The dead alone are free from grief :
We live but to complain.
Their slumber o'er-the youthful dead
Will find a happier sphere.
We live to eat affliction's bread,
And shed the fruitless tear.
Life is the time when tempests lower,
The dead no more may weep;
Oh! who, though arm'd with magic power,
Would break their placid sleep?
Oh then no more let friendship's voice
LOVE to see a man, whose acts
The title does not shame ;
Whose lips despise not common sense,
And on whose brow Intelligence
Inscribes her glorious name!
Bright eyes that flash, indignantly
Disdaining flattery's dower;
With form erect, life's blasts to brave,
Too proud to yield himself a slave
To passion's baneful power.
A mind with useful knowledge stored :
In truth and virtue strong;
With smiles of love upon his cheek,
And lips that know not how to speak
A falsehood or a wrong.
A soul that feels its destiny
Is not alone for earth;
Who counts not birth or ancestry,
But patents his nobility
By deeds of highest worth.
No cringing suppliant for gain
Beneath a tyrant's rod;
But, with an independent heart,
Resolves to nobly act the part
Design'd for him by God.
This is the man I love to see,
Deserving honour,-fame;
The heir of Immortality,
Who elevates humanity,
And dignifies its name!
HE eye of day appear'd to blink and close,
In fitful mood, its golden fringéd lid:
The sun, that o'er the arch of heaven rose,
It rush'd behind a cloud, in glory hid :
And o'er the vale dark waving shadows spread,
As if a raven flapp'd his wings amid
His beams, and hid his rays which blaz'd o'erhead.
I raised my eyes: a cloud of sable hue,
Whose edge was fring'd with fire, amid the blue
Of heaven's dome, obscured his orb from view :
The very buds upon the shrubs and trees,
I seem'd to hear burst into leaves and flowers, So calm the air, unstirr'd by song or breeze,
Until that cloud dissolv'd in pattering showers.
And while the sun remain'd behind the gloom
Of that dark mountain cloud, I almost heard
The little spider toiling at her loom,
So still the air, by insect's wing unstirr❜d.
But when, e'en like the stone which barr'd Christ's tomb,
The black cloud roll'd away, the sun appear'd,
With dazzling majesty again, to gild the bloom
Of flowers, and rouse the insect and the bird;
With golden light the hills and vales t' illume.
Oh! when the air vibrated with the sound
Of buzzing fly and busy humming bee,
And birds they sang in ev'ry bush and tree,
And larks they soar'd above the clover ground,
And fill'd the glowing sky with harmony-
I sit and watch from Cooper's giddy height,
The landscape broad its flow'ry carpet spread:
I view the scene unroll'd in golden light,
I watch the hedgerows, like a tiny thread
Of green, divide the vale's resplendent bed
In fields of every shape, the ruddy hue
Of marls lie mingl'd with the lias blue,
And soils of brown and black are tinted o'er,
With shades of green, like tiles upon the floor
Of God's fair temple: fields appear to lie
Beneath that azure arch, which spans the sky!
* Cooper's Hill.
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