motions, their wanton mazes, their gratuitous activity, their continual change of place without use or purpose, testify their joy, and the exultation which they feel in their lately discovered faculties."-Paley.

XVII. THE JACKDAW.

"OH that I had wings like a dove! for then would I fly away, and be at rest. Lo, then would I wander far off, and remain in the wilderness."-Psalm lv. 6, 7.

THERE is a bird, who by his coat,
And by the hoarseness of his note,
Might be supposed a crow;

A great frequenter of the church
Where, bishop-like, he finds a perch
And dormitory too.

Above the steeple shines a plate,
That turns, and turns, to indicate

From what point blows the weather,
Look up-your brains begin to swim,
"Tis in the clouds-that pleases him,
He chooses it the rather.
Fond of the speculative height,
Thither he wings his airy flight.
And thence securely sees

The bustle and the rareeshow,
That occupy mankind below,
Secure and at his ease.

You think, no doubt, he sits and muses
On future broken bones and bruises,
If he should chance to fall.
No; not a single thought like that
Employs his philosophic pate,
Or troubles it at all.

He sees that this great roundabout,
The world with all its motley rout,
Church, army, physic, law,

Its customs and its businesses,
Is no concern at all of his

And says-what says he?-Caw.

Thrice happy bird! I too have seen
Much of the vanities of men

And sick of having seen 'em;
Would cheerfully these limbs resign
For such a pair of wings as thine,

And such a head between 'em.

COWPER.

A HYMN ON THE SEASONS.

XVIII. A HYMN ON THE SEASONS.

195

"WHAT an astonishing world is this which we inhabit! How great the number, the magnificence, the variety, and the beauty of the creatures it contains! What other hand than that of the Omnipotent could have placed in this immense expanse the sun and stars, whose magnitude, and prodigious distance from us astonish the imagination! Who has assigned them the path they have walked in for so many thousand years? Who has calculated so exactly the respective powers of all these globes, and who has established so perfect a balance between them and the ether which supports them? Who has placed the earth at such a due distance from the sun, that it is neither too near nor too far off? The vicissitudes of day and night, the revolutions of the seasons, the innumerable multitude of animals, reptiles, trees, and plants, which the earth produces, are all the work of God. If a world so admirable were now created before our eyes, who would not consider it as one of the greatest miracles of the Divine omnipotence?"-Sturm.

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;
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 ear:
And oft thy voice in dreadful thunder speaks,
And oft at dawn, deep noon, or falling eve,
By brooks and groves, and hollow whisp'ring gales.
Thy bounty shines in autumn unconfined,
And spreads a common feast for all that lives.
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 bidd'st the world adore,
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 unperceiv'd so soft'ning into shade,
And all so forming an harmonious whole,
That as they still succeed, they ravish still.
But wand'ring oft with brute unconscious gaze,
Man marks not thee, marks not the mighty hand
That ever busy wheels the silent spheres;
Works in the secret deep; shoots teeming thence
The fair profusion that o'erspreads the spring;
Flings from the sun direct the flaming day;
Feeds ev'ry creature; hurls the tempest forth;
And, as on earth this grateful change revolves,
With transport touches all the springs of life.
Nature, attend! join ev'ry living soul
Beneath the spacions 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 th' astonished world, lift high to heaven
Th' 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.
Ye that keep watch in heav'n, as earth asleep
Unconscious lies, effuse your mildest beams,
Ye constellations, while your angels strike,
Amid the spangled sky, the silver lyre.
Great source of day! best image here below
Of thy Creator, ever pouring wide,
From world to world, the vital ocean round,
On nature write with ev'ry beam his praise.

A HYMN ON THE SEASONS.

The thunder rolls! be hush'd the prostrate world,
While cloud to cloud returns the solemn hymn.
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.
Ye woodlands, all awake! A boundless song
Bursts from the groves! and when the restless day,
Expiring, lays the warbling world asleep,
Sweetest of birds! sweet Philomela, charm

The list'ning shades, and teach the night his praise.
Ye chief, for whom the whole creation smiles,
At once the head, the heart, and tongue of all,
Crown the great hymn! in swarming cities vast,
Assembled men to the deep organ join

The long resounding voice, oft breaking clear
At solemn pauses through the swelling bass;
And, as each mingling flame increases, each
In one united ardour rise to heav'n.
Or if you rather choose the rural shade,
And find a fane in ev'ry sacred grove,
There let the shepherd's flute, the virgin's lay,
The prompting seraph, and the poet's lyre,
Still sing the God of seasons as they roll.
For me when I forget the darling theme,
Whether the blossom blows, the summer ray
Russets the plain, inspiring autumn gleams,
Or winter closes in the black'ning east,
Be my tongue mute, my fancy paint no more,
And, dead to joy, forget my heart to beat!
Should fate command me to the farthest verge
Of the green earth, to distant barbarous climes,
Rivers unknown to song, where first the sun
Gilds Indian mountains, or his setting beam
Flames on the Atlantic isles:-'tis nought to me,
Since God is ever present, ever felt

In the void waste as in the city full:

And where he vital breathes there must be joy.
When even at last the solemn hour shall come,
And wing my mystic flight to future worlds,
I cheerful will obey; there, with new pow'rs,
Will rising wonders sing: I cannot go
Where universal love smiles not around,
Sustaining all yon orbs and all their suns-
From seeming evil still educing good,

197

And better thence again, and better still,

In infinite progression.

But I lose

Myself in him, in Light ineffable.

Come then, expressive silence, muse His praise!

XIX. OPE, FOLDED ROSE.

THOMSON.

"THE vegetable kingdom expands everywhere before us an immense portraiture of the Divine Mind, in its contriving skill, profuse imagination, conceiving genius, and exquisite taste; as well as in its interesting qualities of the most gracious benignity and the most benevolent munificence. The various flowers we behold, awaken these sentiments within us, and compel our reason to make these perceptions and this inference. They are the annual heralds and ever-returning pledges to us of His continuing beneficence, of His desire to please and to benefit us, and therefore, of His parental and intellectual amiabilities. They come to us, together with the attendant seasons that nurse and evolve them, as the appointed assurances that the world we inhabit is yet to be preserved, and the present course of things to go on.". Turner's Sacred History.

OPE, folded rose;

Longs for thy beauty the expectant air:

Longs every silken breeze that round thee blows;
The watching summer longs to vaunt thee fair;
Ope, folded rose.

Ope, folded rose ;

The memory of thy glory lit the gloom,
The dull gray gloom of winter and its snows;
Oh, dream of summer in the fire-lit room,
Ope, folded rose.

Ope, folded rose ;

The thrush hath stilled the rustling elm with song;
The cuckoo's call through shadowy woodlands goes ;
May is the morn; why lingerest thou so long?
Ope, folded rose.

XX. THE CLOUD.

W. C. BENNETT.

"THE ancient Greeks called the world Kooμos, beauty. Such is the constitution of all things, or such the plastic power of the human eye, that the primary forms-as the sky, the mountain, the tree, the animal, give us a delight in and for themselves; a pleasure arising from outline, colour, motion, and grouping. This seems partly owing to the eye itself. The eye is the best of artists. By the mutual action of its structure, and of the laws of light, perspective is produced, which integrates every mass of objects, of what character soever, into a well-coloured and shaded globe, so that where the particular objects are mean and unaffecting, the landscape which they compose is round