How oft from you, derided Powers! And teach us to beware. The bosom-weight, your stubborn gift, Shall vanish, if ye please, Like morning mist: and, where it lay, The spirits at your bidding play In gaiety and ease. Star-guided contemplations move Through space, though calm, not raised above Prognostics that ye rule; The naked Indian of the wild, And haply, too, the cradled Child, But who can fathom your intents, A subtle smell that Spring unbinds, The laughter of the Christmas hearth Ye feelingly reprove; And daily, in the conscious breast, And exercise of love. When some great change gives boundless scope To an exulting Nation's hope, Oft, startled and made wise By your low-breathed interpretings, The simply-meek foretaste the springs Of bitter contraries. Ye daunt the proud array of war, For dancers in the festive hall "Tis said, that warnings ye dispense, Emboldened by a keener sense; That men have lived for whom, With dread precision, ye made clear The hour that in a distant year Should knell them to the tomb. Unwelcome insight! Yet there are While on that isthmus which commands God, who instructs the brutes to scent Whose wisdom fixed the scale 1830. XL. VERNAL ODE. Rerum Natura tota est nusquam magis quam in minimis. PLIN. NAT. HIST. I. Beneath the concave of an April sky, When all the fields with freshest green were dight, When it reveals, in evening majesty, Features half lost amid their own pure light. Poised like a weary cloud, in middle air Where oft the venturous heifer drinks the noon-tide breeze. Alighted, there the Stranger stood alone; Fair as a gorgeous Fabric of the east Waves high, embellished by a gleaming shower! II. Beneath the shadow of his purple wings Rested a golden harp; he touched the strings; And, after prelude of unearthly sound Poured through the echoing hills around, He sang "No wintry desolations, Scorching blight or noxious dew, Affect my native habitations; Buried in glory, far beyond the scope Of man's inquiring gaze, but to his hope And in the aspect of each radiant orb ;— Some fixed, some wandering with no timid curb; And free from semblance of decline ;- power, |