The Task and Other Poems [47]
of flowers the woodbine, pale and wan, But well compensating their sickly looks With never-cloying odours, early and late; Hypericum all bloom, so thick a swarm Of flowers like flies, clothing her slender rods, That scarce a leaf appears; mezereon too, Though leafless, well attired, and thick beset With blushing wreaths investing every spray; Althaea with the purple eye; the broom, Yellow and bright as bullion unalloyed Her blossoms; and luxuriant above all The jasmine, throwing wide her elegant sweets, The deep dark green of whose unvarnished leaf Makes more conspicuous, and illumines more The bright profusion of her scattered stars.-- These have been, and these shall be in their day, And all this uniform uncoloured scene Shall be dismantled of its fleecy load, And flush into variety again. From dearth to plenty, and from death to life, Is Nature's progress when she lectures man In heavenly truth; evincing, as she makes The grand transition, that there lives and works A soul in all things, and that soul is God. The beauties of the wilderness are His, That make so gay the solitary place Where no eye sees them. And the fairer forms That cultivation glories in, are His. He sets the bright procession on its way, And marshals all the order of the year. He marks the bounds which Winter may not pass, And blunts his pointed fury. In its case, Russet and rude, folds up the tender germ Uninjured, with inimitable art, And, ere one flowery season fades and dies, Designs the blooming wonders of the next.
Some say that in the origin of things, When all creation started into birth, The infant elements received a law From which they swerve not since; that under force Of that controlling ordinance they move, And need not His immediate hand, who first Prescribed their course, to regulate it now. Thus dream they, and contrive to save a God The encumbrance of His own concerns, and spare The great Artificer of all that moves The stress of a continual act, the pain Of unremitted vigilance and care, As too laborious and severe a task. So man the moth is not afraid, it seems, To span Omnipotence, and measure might That knows no measure, by the scanty rule And standard of his own, that is to-day, And is not ere to-morrow's sun go down. But how should matter occupy a charge Dull as it is, and satisfy a law So vast in its demands, unless impelled To ceaseless service by a ceaseless force, And under pressure of some conscious cause? The Lord of all, Himself through all diffused Sustains and is the life of all that lives. Nature is but a name for an effect Whose cause is God. He feeds the secret fire By which the mighty process is maintained, Who sleeps not, is not weary; in whose sight Slow-circling ages are as transient days; Whose work is without labour, whose designs No flaw deforms, no difficulty thwarts, And whose beneficence no charge exhausts. Him blind antiquity profaned, not served, With self-taught rites and under various names Female and male, Pomona, Pales, Pan, And Flora and Vertumnus; peopling earth With tutelary goddesses and gods That were not, and commending as they would To each some province, garden, field, or grove. But all are under One. One spirit--His Who bore the platted thorns with bleeding brows-- Rules universal nature. Not a flower But shows some touch in freckle, streak, or stain, Of His unrivalled pencil. He inspires Their balmy odours and imparts their hues, And bathes their eyes with nectar, and includes, In grains as countless as the sea-side sands, The forms with which He sprinkles all the earth. Happy who walks with Him! whom, what he finds Of flavour or of scent in fruit or flower, Or what he views of beautiful or grand In nature, from the broad majestic oak To the green blade that twinkles in the sun, Prompts with remembrance of a present God. His presence, who made all so fair, perceived, Makes all still fairer. As with Him no scene Is dreary, so with Him all seasons please. Though winter had been none had man been true, And earth be punished for its tenant's sake, Yet not in vengeance; as this smiling
Some say that in the origin of things, When all creation started into birth, The infant elements received a law From which they swerve not since; that under force Of that controlling ordinance they move, And need not His immediate hand, who first Prescribed their course, to regulate it now. Thus dream they, and contrive to save a God The encumbrance of His own concerns, and spare The great Artificer of all that moves The stress of a continual act, the pain Of unremitted vigilance and care, As too laborious and severe a task. So man the moth is not afraid, it seems, To span Omnipotence, and measure might That knows no measure, by the scanty rule And standard of his own, that is to-day, And is not ere to-morrow's sun go down. But how should matter occupy a charge Dull as it is, and satisfy a law So vast in its demands, unless impelled To ceaseless service by a ceaseless force, And under pressure of some conscious cause? The Lord of all, Himself through all diffused Sustains and is the life of all that lives. Nature is but a name for an effect Whose cause is God. He feeds the secret fire By which the mighty process is maintained, Who sleeps not, is not weary; in whose sight Slow-circling ages are as transient days; Whose work is without labour, whose designs No flaw deforms, no difficulty thwarts, And whose beneficence no charge exhausts. Him blind antiquity profaned, not served, With self-taught rites and under various names Female and male, Pomona, Pales, Pan, And Flora and Vertumnus; peopling earth With tutelary goddesses and gods That were not, and commending as they would To each some province, garden, field, or grove. But all are under One. One spirit--His Who bore the platted thorns with bleeding brows-- Rules universal nature. Not a flower But shows some touch in freckle, streak, or stain, Of His unrivalled pencil. He inspires Their balmy odours and imparts their hues, And bathes their eyes with nectar, and includes, In grains as countless as the sea-side sands, The forms with which He sprinkles all the earth. Happy who walks with Him! whom, what he finds Of flavour or of scent in fruit or flower, Or what he views of beautiful or grand In nature, from the broad majestic oak To the green blade that twinkles in the sun, Prompts with remembrance of a present God. His presence, who made all so fair, perceived, Makes all still fairer. As with Him no scene Is dreary, so with Him all seasons please. Though winter had been none had man been true, And earth be punished for its tenant's sake, Yet not in vengeance; as this smiling