why The perishable nature of the best human institutions Spiritual liberty not perishable — The slavish state of man by nature Deliver him, Deist, if you can
Grace must do it - The respective merits of patriots and martyrs stated - Their different treatment- Happy freedom of the man whom grace makes free His relish
of the works of God - Address to the Creator. 'Tis morning; and the sun, with ruddy orb Ascending, fires the horizon; while the clouds That crowd away before the driving wind, More ardent as the disk emerges more, Resemble most some city in a blaze,
5 Seen through the leafless wood. His slanting ray Slides ineffectual down the snowy vale, And, tingeing all his own rosy hue, From every herb and every spiry blade Stretches a length of shadow o'er the field. Mine, spindling into longitude immense, In spite of gravity, and sage remark That I myself am but a fleeting shade, Provokes me to a smile. With eye askance I view the muscular proportioned limb Transformed to a lean shank. The shapeless pair, As they designed to mock me, at my side Take step for step; and, as I near approach The cottage, walk along the plastered wall, Preposterous sight! the legs without the man. 20 The verdure of the plain lies buried deep Beneath the dazzling deluge; and the bents And coarser grass, upspearing o'er the rest,
Of late unsightly and unseen, now shine
Conspicuous, and in bright apparel clad,
And, fledged with icy feathers, nod superb.
The cattle mourn in corners, where the fence
Screens them, and seem half petrified to sleep
In unrecumbent sadness. There they wait
Their wonted fodder, not like hungering man,
Fretful if unsupplied, but silent, meek,
And patient of the slow-paced swain's delay.
He from the stack carves out the accustomed load,
Deep-plunging, and again deep-plunging oft,
His broad keen knife into the solid mass;
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Smooth as a wall the upright remnant stands,
With such undeviating and even force
He severs it away; no needless care
Lest storm should overset the leaning pile
Deciduous, or its own unbalanced weight.
40 Forth goes the woodman, leaving unconcerned The cheerful haunts of man, to wield the axe And drive the wedge, in yonder forest drear, From morn to eve his solitary task. Shaggy, and lean, and shrewd, with pointed ears 45 And tail cropped short, half lurcher and half cur, His dog attends him. Close behind his heel Now creeps he slow; and now, with many a frisk Wide-scampering, snatches up the drifted snow With ivory teeth, or ploughs it with his snout; Then shakes his powdered coat, and barks for joy. Heedless of all his pranks, the sturdy churl
Moves right toward the mark; nor stops for aught,
But now and then with pressure of his thumb
To adjust the fragrant charge of a short tube
That fumes beneath his nose: the trailing cloud
Streams far behind him, scenting all the air.
Now from the roost, or from the neighboring pale,
Where diligent to catch the first faint gleam
Of smiling day, they gossipped side by side,
Come trooping at the housewife's well-known call
The feathered tribes domestic. Half on wing,
And half on foot, they brush the fleecy flood,
Conscious and fearful of too deep a plunge.
The sparrows peep, and quit the sheltering eaves 65
To seize the fair occasion. Well they eye
The scattered grain, and thievishly resolved
To escape the impending famine, often scared
As oft return, a pert voracious kind.
Clean riddance quickly made, one only care 70
Remains to each, the search of sunny nook,
Or shed impervious to the blast. Resigned
To sad necessity, the cock foregoes
His wonted strut, and, wading at their head
With well-considered steps, seems to resent
75 His altered gait, and stateliness retrenched. How find the myriads, that in summer cheer The hills and valleys with their ceaseless songs Due sustenance, or where subsist they now? Earth yields them naught: the imprisoned worm is safe
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Beneath the frozen clod; all seeds of herbs
Lie covered close; and berry-bearing thorns,
That feed the thrush (whatever some suppose)
Afford the smaller minstrels no supply.
The long-protracted rigor of the year
Thins all their numerous flocks. In chinks and holes
Ten thousand seek an unmolested end,
As instinct prompts, self-buried ere they die.
The very rooks and daws forsake the fields,
Where neither grub nor root nor earth nut now
Repays their labor more; and perched aloft
By the wayside, or stalking in the path,
Lean pensioners upon the traveller's track,
Pick up their nauseous dole, though sweet to them,
Of voided pulse or half-digested grain.
The streams are lost amid the splendid blank,
O'erwhelming all distinction. On the flood,
Indurated and fixed, the snowy weight
Lies undissolved; while silently beneath,
And unperceived, the current steals away. 100
Not so, where scornful of a check it leaps
The mill-dam,o dashes on the restless wheel,
And wantons in the pebbly gulf below:
No frost can bind it there; its utmost force
Can but arrest the light and smoky mist
That in its fall the liquid sheet throws wide.
And see where it has hung the embroidered banks
With forms so various, that no powers of art,
The pencil, or the pen, may trace the scene!
Here glittering turrets rise, upbearing high 110
(Fantastic misarrangement !) on the roof
Large growth of what may seem the sparkling trees
And shrubs of fairy land. The crystal drops
That trickle down the branches, fast congealed,
Shoot into pillars of pellucid length,
And prop the pile they but adorned before.
Here grotto within grotto safe defies
The sunbeam; there embossed and fretted wild,
The growing wonder takes a thousand shapes
Capricious, in which fancy seeks in vain
The likeness of some object seen before.
Thus Nature works as if to mock at Art,
And in defiance of her rival powers;
By these fortuitous and random strokes
Performing such inimitable feats,
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As she with all her rules can never reach.
Less worthy of applause, though more admired,
Because a novelty, the work of man,
Imperial mistress of the fur-clad Russ!
Thy most magnificent and mighty freak,
130 The wonder of the North. No forest fell When thou wouldst build; no quarry sent its stores To enrich thy walls: but thou didst hew the floods, And make thy marble of the glassy wave. In such a palace Aristæus foundo
135 Cyrene, when he bore the plaintive tale Of his lost bees to her maternal ear: In such a palace poetry might place
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