A SUMMER EVENING'S MEDITATION.

'TIS past! The sultry tyrant of the south

Has spent his short-lived rage; more grateful hours Move silent on; the skies no more repell

The dazzled sight, but with mild maiden beams

Of tempered lustre court the cherished eye

To wander o'er their sphere; where hung aloft
Dian's bright crescent, like a silver bow

New strung in heaven, lifts high its beamy horns
Impatient for the night, and seems to push
Her brother down the sky. Fair Venus shines
Even in the eye of day; with sweetest beam
Propitious shines, and shakes a trembling flood

Of softened radiance from her dewy locks.

The shadows spread apace; while meekened Eve,
Her cheek yet warm with blushes, slow retires
Through the Hesperian gardens of the west,
And shuts the gates of day. 'Tis now the hour
When Contemplation from her sunless haunts,
The cool damp grotto, or the lonely depth

Of unpierced woods, where wrapt in solid shade
She mused away the gaudy hours of noon,
And fed on thoughts unripened by the sun,
Moves forward; and with radiant finger points

Το

yon blue concave swelled by breath divine, Where, one by one, the living eyes of heaven Awake, quick kindling o'er the face of ether One boundless blaze; ten thousand trembling fires, And dancing lustres, where the unsteady eye, Restless and dazzled, wanders unconfined O'er all this field of glories; spacious field, And worthy of the Master: he, whose hand

With hieroglyphics elder than the Nile

Inscribed the mystic tablet, hung on high

To public gaze, and said, "Adore, O man!

The finger of thy God." From what pure wells Of milky light, what soft o'erflowing urn,

Are all these lamps so fill'd? these friendly lamps,

For ever streaming o'er the azure deep

To point our path, and light us to our home.

How soft they slide along their lucid spheres!
And silent as the foot of Time, fulfill

Their destined courses: Nature's self is hushed,
And, but a scattered leaf, which rustles through
The thick-wove foliage, not a sound is heard
To break the midnight air; though the raised ear,
Intensely listening, drinks in every breath.

How deep the silence, yet how loud the praise!

But are they silent all? or is there not

A tongue in every star, that talks with man,

And woos him to be wise? nor woos in vain :
This dead of midnight is the noon of thought,
And Wisdom mounts her zenith with the stars.

At this still hour the self-collected soul

Turns inward, and beholds a stranger there

Of high descent, and more than mortal rank;
An embryo God; a spark of fire divine,
Which must burn on for ages, when the sun,-
Fair transitory creature of a day!—

Has closed his golden eye, and wrapt in shades
Forgets his wonted journey through the east.

Ye citadels of light, and seats of Gods!

Perhaps my future home, from whence the soul,
Revolving periods past, may oft look back
With recollected tenderness on all

The various busy scenes she left below,

Its deep-laid projects and its strange events,

As on some fond and doting tale that soothed
Her infant hours- -O be it lawful now

To tread the hallowed circle of your courts,
And with mute wonder and delighted awe
Approach your burning confines.

Seized in thought,

On Fancy's wild and roving wing I sail,

From the green borders of the peopled Earth, And the pale Moon, her duteous fair attendant;

From solitary Mars; from the vast orb

Of Jupiter, whose huge gigantic bulk

Dances in ether like the lightest leaf;

To the dim verge, the suburbs of the system, Where cheerless Saturn 'midst his watery moons

Girt with a lucid zone, in gloomy pomp,

Sits like an exiled monarch: fearless thence

I launch into the trackless deeps of space,
Where, burning round, ten thousand suns appear,

Of elder beam, which ask no leave to shine

Of our terrestrial star, nor borrow light

From the proud regent of our scanty day;

Sons of the morning, first-born of creation,
And only less than Him who marks their track,
And guides their fiery wheels. Here must I stop,
Or is there aught beyond? What hand unseen
Impells me onward through the glowing orbs