As the good shepherd tends his fleecy care,
Seeks freshest pasture, and the purest air;
Explores the lost, the wandering sheep directs,
By day o'ersees them, and by night protects;
The tender lambs he raises in his arms,
Feeds from his hand, and in his bosom warms;
Thus shall mankind his guardian care engage,
The promised father of the future age.
No more shall nation against nation rise,
Nor ardent warriors meet with hateful eyes;
Nor fields with gleaming steel be covered o'er,
The brazen trumpets kindle rage no more:
But useless lances into scythes shall bend,
And the broad falchion in a ploughshare end.
Then palaces shall rise; the joyful son
Shall finish what his short-lived sire begun ;

50

55

60

Their vines a shadow to their race shall yield,

65

And the same hand that sowed, shall reap the field.

The lambs with wolves shall graze the verdant mead,

And boys in flowery bands the tiger lead:

The steer and lion at one crib shall meet,

And harmless serpents lick the pilgrim's feet.

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The smiling infant in his hand shall take

The crested basilisk and speckled snake;

!

Pleased, the green lustre of the scales survey,
And with their forky tongue shall innocently play,
Rise, crowned with light, imperial Salem, rise!
Exalt thy towery head, and lift thy eyes
See a long race thy spacious courts adorn!
See future sons and daughters yet unborn,
In crowding ranks on every side arise,
Demanding life, impatient for the skies!

See barbarous nations at thy gates attend,

Walk in thy light, and in thy temple bend!

See thy bright altars thronged with prostrate kings,

And heaped with products of Sabean1 springs.

For thee Idume's 2 spicy forests blow,

95

And seeds of gold in Ophir's 3 mountains glow.
See heaven its sparkling portals wide display,
And break upon thee in a flood of day!
No more the rising sun shall gild the morn,
Nor evening Cynthia 4 fill her silver horn;

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2 Idumea, now Arabia Petrea.

1 Sabea, Arabia Felix, renowned for its aromatics. 3 Ophir, a region from which gold was anciently obtained. Its sitra ion is uncertain. The goddess of the moon, so called from her birthplace, Mt. Cynthus, in the isle of Delos.

But lost, dissolved in thy superior rays,
One tide of glory, one unclouded blaze

O'erflow thy courts: the Light himself shall shine
Revealed, and God's eternal day be thine!

The seas shall waste, the skies in smoke decay,
Rocks fall to dust, and mountains melt away;
But fixed his word, his saving power remains;
Thy realm for ever lasts, thy own Messiah reigns!

Edward Young: 1681-1765.

Past Hours.-From 'Night Thoughts.'

These hours that lately smiled, where are they now?
Pallid to thought, and ghastly! drowned, all drowned
In that great deep, which nothing diseinbogues!
And, dying, they bequeathed thee small renown.
The rest are on the wing: how fleet their flight!
Already has the fatal train took fire;

A moment, and the world's blown up to thee;
The sun is darkness, and the stars are dust.

'Tis greatly wise to talk with our past hours;
And ask them, what report they bore to heaven;
And how they might have borne more welcome news.
Their answers form what men experience call;
If Wisdom's friend, her best; if not, worst foe.
'Oh, reconcile them!' kind Experience cries;
There's nothing here, but what as nothing weighs;
The more our joy, the more we know it vain;
And by success are tutored to despair.'

Nor is it only thus, but must be so.

Who knows not this, though gray, is still a child.
Loose then from earth the grasp of fond desire,
Weigh anchor, and some happier clime explore.

Piety. From 'Night Thoughts.'

On piety, humanity is built;
And, on humanity, much happiness;

And yet still more on piety itself.

A soul in commerce with her God, is heaven;
Feels not the tumults and the shocks of life;
The whirls of passions, and the strokes of heart.
A Deity believed, is joy begun;

A Deity adored, is joy advanced;

A Deity beloved, is joy matured.

Each branch of piety delight inspires;

Faith builds a bridge from this world to the next,
O'er death's dark gulf, and all its horror hides;
Praise, the sweet exhalation of our joy,

That joy exalts, and makes it sweeter still;
Prayer ardent opens heaven, lets down a stream
Of glory on the consecrated hour

Of man, in audience with the Deity.

Who worships the great God, that instant joins
The first in heaven, and sets his foot on hell.

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James Thomson: 1700-1748.

Spring Flowers.

Along these blushing borders, bright with dew,
And in yon mingled wilderness of flowers,
Fair-handed Spring unbosoms every grace:
Throws out the snowdrop and the crocus first;
The daisy, primrose, violet darkly blue,
And polyanthus of unnumbered dyes;

The yellow wallflower, stained with iron brown;
And lavish stock that scents the garden round;
From the soft wing of vernal breezes shed,
Anemones; auriculas, enriched

5

10

With shining meal o'er all their velvet leaves;
And full ranunculus, of glowing red.

Then comes the tulip race, where beauty plays
Her idle freaks: from family diffused
To family, as flies the father-dust,

15

The varied colours run; and, while they break
On the charmed eye, the exulting florist marks,
With secret pride, the wonders of his hand.
No gradual bloom is wanting; from the bud,
First-born of Spring, to Summer's musky tribes :
Nor hyacinths, of purest virgin white,
Low-bent, and blushing inward; nor jonquils,
Of potent fragrance; nor narcissus fair,
As o'er the fabled fountain 1 hanging still;
Nor broad carnations; nor gay-spotted pinks;
Nor, showered from every bush, the damask-rose.
Infinite numbers, delicacies, smells,

With hues on hues expression cannot paint,
The breath of Nature, and her endless bloom.

Hail! Source of Being! Universal Soul

Of heaven and earth! Essential Presence, hail!
To Thee I bend the knee; to Thee my thoughts,
Continual, climb; who, with a master-hand,
Hast the great whole into perfection touched.
By Thee the various vegetative tribes,
Wrapt in a filmy net, and clad with leaves,
Draw the live ether, and imbibe the dew.

By Thee disposed into congenial soils,

Stands each attractive plant, and sucks, and swells
The juicy tide; a twining mass of tubes.

Birds in Spring.

Hark, how loud the woods

Invite you forth in all your gayest trim.

Lend me your song, ye nightingales! O pour

The mazy-running soul of melody

Into my varied verse! while I deduce,

1 According to the fable, Narcissus was a handsome youth, wholly inaccessible to the feeling of love. One of his rejected lovers having prayed to Nemesis to punish him, he was caused to fall in love with his own image reflected in a well. Unable to approach the shadow, Narcissus gradually perished with love, and his corpse was changed into the flower called after him.

From the first note the hollow cuckoo sings,
The symphony of Spring, and touch a theme
Unknown to fame-the passion of the groves.

When first the soul of love is sent abroad,
Warm through the vital air, and on the heart
Harmonious seizes, the gay troops begin,
In gallant thought, to plume the painted wing;
And try again the long-forgotten strain,
At first faint-warbled. But no sooner grows
The soft infusion prevalent, and wide,
Than, all alive, at once their joy o'erflows
In music unconfined. Up springs the lark,
Shrill-voiced and loud, the messenger of morn:
Ere yet the shadows fly, he mounted sings
Amid the dawning clouds, and from their haunts
Calls up the tuneful nations. Every copse
Deep-tangled, tree irregular, and bush
Bending with dewy moisture, o'er the heads
Of the coy quiristers that lodge within,
Are prodigal of harmony. The thrush
And woodlark, o'er the kind-contending throng
Superior heard, run through the sweetest length
Of notes; when listening Philomela deigns
To let them joy, and purposes, in thought
Elate, to make her night excel their day.
The black-bird whistles from the thorny brake;
The mellow bullfinch answers from the grove;
Nor are the linnets, o'er the flowering furze
Poured out profusely, silent: joined to these
Innumerous songsters, in the freshening shade
Of new-sprung leaves, their modulations mix
Mellifluous. The jay, the rook, the daw,
And each harsh pipe, discordant heard alone,
Aid the full concert; while the stockdove breathes
A melancholy murmur through the whole.

Thee haughty tyrants ne'er shall tame;
All their attempts to bend thee down
Will but arouse thy generous flame,

But work their woe, and thy renown.
5.

To thee belongs the rural reign;

Thy cities shall with commerce shine; All thine shall be the subject main; And every shore it circles thine.

6.

The Muses, still with freedom found,
Shall to thy happy coast repair;
Blessed isle with matchless beauty
crowned,

And manly hearts to guard the fair:
'Rule, Britannia, rule the waves;
Britons never will be slaves.'

William Collins: 1721-1759.

Ode to Evening.

1.

If aught of oaten stop, or pastoral song,
May hope, chaste Eve, to soothe thy modest ear,
Like thy own solemn springs,

Thy springs, and dying gales;

2.

O nymph reserved, while now the bright-haired sun
Sits in yon western tent, whose cloudy skirts,

With brede ethereal wove,

O'erhang his wavy bed:

3.

Now air is hushed, save where the weak-eyed bat,
With short shrill shriek, flits by on leathern wing,
Or where the beetle winds
His small but sullen horn,

4.

As oft he rises midst the twilight path,
Against the pilgrim borne in heedless hum:
Now teach me, maid composed,

To breathe some softened strain,

5.

Whose numbers stealing through thy darkening vale,
May not unseemly with its stillness suit,

As, musing slow, I hail

Thy genial loved return!

6.

For when thy folding-star arising shews
His paly circlet, at his warning lamp

The fragrant hours, and elves

Who slept in buds the day,

7.

And many a nymph who wreathes her brows with sedge,
And sheds the freshening dew, and, lovelier still,

The pensive pleasures sweet

Prepare thy shadowy car.

8.

Then lead, calm votaress, where some sheety lake
Cheers the lone heath, or some time-hallowed pile,
Or upland fallows gray
Reflect its last cool gleam.

9.

But when chill blustering winds, or driving rain,
Forbid my willing feet, be mine the hut

That from the mountain's side

Views wilds and swelling floods,

10.

And hamlets brown, and dim-discovered spires;
And hears their simple bell, and marks o'er all
Thy dewy fingers draw
The gradual dusky veil.

braid