The Task and Other Poems [46]
the trees I view the embattled tower Whence all the music. I again perceive The soothing influence of the wafted strains, And settle in soft musings, as I tread The walk still verdant under oaks and elms, Whose outspread branches overarch the glade. The roof, though movable through all its length, As the wind sways it, has yet well sufficed, And, intercepting in their silent fall The frequent flakes, has kept a path for me. No noise is here, or none that hinders thought: The redbreast warbles still, but is content With slender notes and more than half suppressed. Pleased with his solitude, and flitting light From spray to spray, where'er he rests he shakes From many a twig the pendant drops of ice, That tinkle in the withered leaves below. Stillness, accompanied with sounds so soft, Charms more than silence. Meditation here May think down hours to moments. Here the heart May give an useful lesson to the head, And learning wiser grow without his books. Knowledge and wisdom, far from being one, Have ofttimes no connection. Knowledge dwells In heads replete with thoughts of other men; Wisdom in minds attentive to their own. Knowledge, a rude unprofitable mass, The mere materials with which wisdom builds, Till smoothed and squared and fitted to its place, Does but encumber whom it seems to enrich. Knowledge is proud that he has learned so much, Wisdom is humble that he knows no more. Books are not seldom talismans and spells By which the magic art of shrewder wits Holds an unthinking multitude enthralled. Some to the fascination of a name Surrender judgment hoodwinked. Some the style Infatuates, and, through labyrinths and wilds Of error, leads them by a tune entranced. While sloth seduces more, too weak to bear The insupportable fatigue of thought, And swallowing therefore without pause or choice The total grist unsifted, husks and all. But trees, and rivulets whose rapid course Defies the check of winter, haunts of deer, And sheep-walks populous with bleating lambs, And lanes, in which the primrose ere her time Peeps through the moss that clothes the hawthorn root, Deceive no student. Wisdom there, and truth, Not shy as in the world, and to be won By slow solicitation, seize at once The roving thought, and fix it on themselves.
What prodigies can power divine perform More grand than it produces year by year, And all in sight of inattentive man? Familiar with the effect we slight the cause, And in the constancy of Nature's course, The regular return of genial months, And renovation of a faded world, See nought to wonder at. Should God again, As once in Gibeon, interrupt the race Of the undeviating and punctual sun, How would the world admire! but speaks it less An agency divine, to make him know His moment when to sink and when to rise Age after age, than to arrest his course? All we behold is miracle: but, seen So duly, all is miracle in vain. Where now the vital energy that moved, While summer was, the pure and subtle lymph Through the imperceptible meandering veins Of leaf and flower? It sleeps: and the icy touch Of unprolific winter has impressed A cold stagnation on the intestine tide. But let the months go round, a few short months, And all shall be restored. These naked shoots, Barren as lances, among which the wind Makes wintry music, sighing as it goes, Shall put their graceful foliage on again, And more aspiring and with ampler spread Shall boast new charms, and more than they have lost. Then, each in its peculiar honours clad, Shall publish even to the distant eye Its family and tribe. Laburnum rich In streaming gold; syringa ivory pure; The scented and the scentless rose; this red And of a humbler growth, the other tall, And throwing up into the darkest gloom Of neighbouring cypress, or more sable yew, Her silver globes, light as the foamy surf That the wind severs from the broken wave; The lilac various in array, now white, Now sanguine, and her beauteous head now set With purple spikes pyramidal, as if Studious of ornament, yet unresolved Which hue she most approved, she chose them all; Copious
What prodigies can power divine perform More grand than it produces year by year, And all in sight of inattentive man? Familiar with the effect we slight the cause, And in the constancy of Nature's course, The regular return of genial months, And renovation of a faded world, See nought to wonder at. Should God again, As once in Gibeon, interrupt the race Of the undeviating and punctual sun, How would the world admire! but speaks it less An agency divine, to make him know His moment when to sink and when to rise Age after age, than to arrest his course? All we behold is miracle: but, seen So duly, all is miracle in vain. Where now the vital energy that moved, While summer was, the pure and subtle lymph Through the imperceptible meandering veins Of leaf and flower? It sleeps: and the icy touch Of unprolific winter has impressed A cold stagnation on the intestine tide. But let the months go round, a few short months, And all shall be restored. These naked shoots, Barren as lances, among which the wind Makes wintry music, sighing as it goes, Shall put their graceful foliage on again, And more aspiring and with ampler spread Shall boast new charms, and more than they have lost. Then, each in its peculiar honours clad, Shall publish even to the distant eye Its family and tribe. Laburnum rich In streaming gold; syringa ivory pure; The scented and the scentless rose; this red And of a humbler growth, the other tall, And throwing up into the darkest gloom Of neighbouring cypress, or more sable yew, Her silver globes, light as the foamy surf That the wind severs from the broken wave; The lilac various in array, now white, Now sanguine, and her beauteous head now set With purple spikes pyramidal, as if Studious of ornament, yet unresolved Which hue she most approved, she chose them all; Copious