The Seasons Read Online

The unsightly plain

Lies a brown deluge; as the low-bent clouds

Pour flood on flood, yet unexhausted still

Combine, and, deepening into night, shut up

The day's fair face. The wanderers of heaven,

Each to his home, retire; save those that love

To take their pastime in the troubled air,

Or skimming flutter round the dimply pool.

The cattle from the untasted fields return

And ask, with meaning low, their wonted stalls,

Or ruminate in the contiguous shade.

Thither the household feathery people crowd,

The crested cock, with all his female train,

Pensive and dripping; while the cottage-hind

Hangs o'er the enlivening blaze, and taleful there

Recounts his simple frolic: much he talks,

And much he laughs, nor recks the storm that blows

Without, and rattles on his humble roof.

Wide o'er the brim, with many a torrent swelled,

And the mixed ruin of its banks o'erspread,

At last the roused-up river pours along:

Resistless, roaring, dreadful, down it comes,

From the rude mountain and the mossy wild,

Tumbling through rocks abrupt, and sounding far;

Then o'er the sanded valley floating spreads,

Calm, sluggish, silent; till again, constrained

Between two meeting hills, it bursts a way

Where rocks and woods o'erhang the turbid stream;

There, gathering triple force, rapid and deep,

It boils, and wheels, and foams, and thunders through.

Nature! great parent! whose unceasing hand

Rolls round the Seasons of the changeful year,

How mighty, how majestic are thy works!

With what a pleasing dread they swell the soul,

That sees astonished, and astonished sings!

Ye too, ye winds! that now begin to blow

With boisterous sweep, I raise my voice to you.

Where are your stores, ye powerful beings! say,

Where your aerial magazines reserved

To swell the brooding terrors of the storm?

In what far-distant region of the sky,

Hushed in deep silence, sleep you when 'tis calm?

When from the pallid, sky the Sun descends,

With many a spot, that o'er his glaring orb

Uncertain wanders, stained; red fiery streaks

Begin to flush around. The reeling clouds

Stagger with dizzy poise, as doubting yet

Which master to obey; while, rising slow,

Blank in the leaden-coloured east, the moon

Wears a wan circle round her blunted horns.

Seen through the turbid, fluctuating air,

The stars obtuse emit a shivering ray;

Or frequent seem to shoot athwart the gloom,

And long behind them trail the whitening blaze.

Snatched in short eddies, plays the withered leaf;

And on the flood the dancing feather floats.

With broadened nostrils to the sky upturned,

The conscious heifer snuffs the stormy gale.

Even, as the matron, at her nightly task,

With pensive labour draws the flaxen thread,

The wasted taper and the crackling flame

Foretell the blast. But chief the plumy race,

The tenants of the sky, its changes speak.

Retiring from the downs, where all day long

They picked their scanty fare, a blackening train

Of clamorous rooks thick-urge their weary flight,

And seek the closing shelter of the grove.

Assiduous, in his bower, the wailing owl

Plies his sad song. The cormorant on high

Wheels from the deep, and screams along the land.

Loud shrieks the soaring hern; and with wild wing

The circling sea-fowl cleave the flaky clouds.

Ocean, unequal pressed, with broken tide

And blind commotion heaves; while from the shore,

Eat into caverns by the restless wave,

And forest-rustling mountain comes a voice

That, solemn-sounding, bids the world prepare.

Then issues forth the storm with sudden burst,

And hurls the whole precipitated air

Down in a torrent. On the passive main

Descends the ethereal force, and with strong gust

Turns from its bottom the discoloured deep.

Through the black night that sits immense around,

Lashed into foam, the fierce-conflicting brine

Seems o'er a thousand raging waves to burn.

Meantime the mountain-billows, to the clouds

In dreadful tumult swelled, surge above surge,

Burst into chaos with tremendous roar,

And anchored navies from their stations drive

Wild as the winds, across the howling waste

Of mighty waters: now the inflated wave

Straining they scale, and now impetuous shoot

Into the secret chambers of the deep,

The wintry Baltic thundering o'er their head.

Emerging thence again, before the breath

Of full-exerted heaven they wing their course,

And dart on distant coasts – if some sharp rock

Or shoal insidious break not their career,

And in loose fragments fling them floating round.

Nor less at land the loosened tempest reigns.

The mountain thunders, and its sturdy sons

Stoop to the bottom of the rocks they shade.

Lone on the midnight steep, and all aghast,

The dark wayfaring stranger breathless toils,

And, often falling, climbs against the blast.

Low waves the rooted forest, vexed, and sheds

What of its tarnished honours yet remain –

Dashed down and scattered, by the tearing wind's

Assiduous fury, its gigantic limbs.

Thus struggling through the dissipated grove,

The whirling tempest raves along the plain;

And, on the cottage thatched or lordly roof

Keen-fastening, shakes them to the solid base.

Sleep frighted flies; and round the rocking dome,

For entrance eager, howls the savage blast.

Then too, they say, through all the burdened air

Long groans are heard, shrill sounds, and distant sighs,

That, uttered by the demon of the night,

Warn the devoted wretch of woe and death.

Huge uproar lords it wide. The clouds, commixed

With stars swift-gliding, sweep along the sky.

All Nature reels: till Nature's King, who oft

Amid tempestuous darkness dwells alone,

And on the wings of the careering wind

Walks dreadfully serene, commands a calm;

Then straight air, sea, and earth are hushed at once.

As yet 'tis midnight deep. The weary clouds,

Slow-meeting, mingle into solid gloom.

Now, while the drowsy world lies lost in sleep,

Let me associate with the serious Night,

And Contemplation, her sedate compeer;

Let me shake off the intrusive cares of day,

And lay the meddling senses all aside.

Where now, ye lying vanities of life!

Ye ever-tempting, ever-cheating train!

Where are you now? and what is your amount?

Vexation, disappointment, and remorse.

Sad, sickening thought! and yet deluded man,

A scene of crude disjointed visions past,

And broken slumbers, rises still resolved,

With new-flushed hopes, to run the giddy round.

Father of light and life! thou Good Supreme!

O teach me what is good! teach me Thyself!

Save me from folly, vanity, and vice,

From every low pursuit; and feed my soul

With knowledge, conscious peace, and virtue pure –

Sacred, substantial, never-fading bliss!

The keener tempests come: and, fuming dun

From all the livid east or piercing north,

Thick clouds ascend, in whose capacious womb

A vapoury deluge lies, to snow congealed.

Heavy they roll their fleecy world along,

And the sky saddens with the gathered storm.

Through the hushed air the whitening shower descends,

At first thin-wavering; till at last the flakes

Fall broad and wide and fast, dimming the day

With a continual flow. The cherished fields

Put on their winter-robe of purest white.

'Tis brightness all; save where the new snow melts

Along the mazy current. Low the woods

Bow their hoar head; and, ere the languid sun

Faint from the west emits his evening ray,

Earth's universal face, deep-hid and chill,

Is one wild dazzling waste, that buries wide

The works of man. Drooping, the labourer-ox

Stands covered o'er with snow, and then demands

The fruit of all his toil. The fowls of heaven,

Tamed by the cruel season, crowd around

The winnowing store, and claim the little boon

Which Providence assigns them. One alone,

The redbreast, sacred to the household gods,

Wisely regardful of the embroiling sky,

In joyless fields and thorny thickets leaves

His shivering mates, and pays to trusted man

His annual visit. Half afraid, he first

Against the window beats; then brisk alights

On the warm hearth; then, hopping o'er the floor,

Eyes all the smiling family askance,

And pecks, and starts, and wonders where he is –

Till, more familiar grown, the table-crumbs

Attract, his slender feet. The foodless wilds

Pour forth their brown inhabitants. The hare,

Though timorous of heart, and hard beset

By death in various forms, dark snares, and dogs,

And more unpitying men, the garden seeks,

Urged on by fearless want. The bleating kind

Eye the bleak heaven, and next the glistening earth,

With looks of dumb despair; then, sad-dispersed,

Dig for the withered herb through heaps of snow.

Now, shepherds, to your helpless charge be kind:

Baffle the raging year, and fill their pens

With food at will; lodge them below the storm,

And watch them strict: for, from the bellowing east,

In this dire season, oft the whirlwind's wing

Sweeps up the burden of whole wintry plains

In one wide waft, and o'er the hapless flocks,

Hid in the hollow of two neighbouring hills,

The billowy tempest whelms; till, upward urged,

The valley to a shining mountain swells,

Tipt with a wreath high-curling in the sky.

As thus the snows arise, and, foul and fierce,

All Winter drives along the darkened air,

In his own loose-revolving fields the swain

Disastered stands; sees other hills ascend,

Of unknown joyless brow; and other scenes,

Of horrid prospect, shag the trackless plain;

Nor finds the river nor the forest, hid

Beneath the formless wild; but wanders on

From hill to dale, still more and more astray –

Impatient flouncing through the drifted heaps,

Stung with the thoughts of home: the thoughts of home

Rush on his nerves and call their vigour forth

In many a vain attempt. How sinks his soul!

What black despair, what horror fills his heart,

When, for the dusky spot which fancy feigned

His tufted cottage rising through the snow,

He meets the roughness of the middle waste,

Far from the track and blest abode of man;

While round him night resistless closes fast,

And every tempest, howling o'er his head,

Renders the savage wilderness more wild.

Then throng the busy shapes into his mind

Of covered pits, unfathomably deep,

A dire descent! beyond the power of frost;

Of faithless bogs; of precipices huge,

Smoothed up with snow; and (what is land unknown,

What water) of the still unfrozen spring,

In the loose marsh or solitary lake,

Where the fresh fountain from the bottom boils.

These check his fearful steps; and down he sinks

Beneath the shelter of the shapeless drift,

Thinking o'er all the bitterness of death,

Mixed with the tender anguish nature shoots

Through the wrung bosom of the dying man –

His wife, his children, and his friends unseen.

In vain for him the officious wife prepares

The fire fair-blazing and the vestment warm;

In vain his little children, peeping out

Into the mingling storm, demand their sire

With tears of artless innocence. Alas!

Nor wife nor children more shall he behold,

Nor friends, nor sacred home. On every nerve

The deadly Winter seizes, shuts up sense,

And, o'er his inmost vitals creeping cold,

Lays him along the snows a stiffened corse,

Stretched out, and bleaching in the northern blast.

Ah! little think the gay licentious proud,

Whom pleasure, power, and affluence surround –

They, who their thoughtless hours in giddy mirth,

And wanton, often cruel, riot waste –

Ah! little think they, while they dance along,

How many feel, this very moment, death

And all the sad variety of pain;

How many sink in the devouring flood,

Or more devouring flame; how many bleed,

By shameful variance betwixt man and man;

How many pine in want, and dungeon-glooms,

Shut from the common air and common use

Of their own limbs; how many drink the cup

Of baleful grief, or eat the bitter bread

Of misery; sore pierced by wintry winds,

How many shrink into the sordid hut

Of cheerless poverty; how many shake

With all the fiercer tortures of the mind,

Unbounded passion, madness, guilt, remorse –

Whence, tumbled headlong from the height of life,

They furnish matter for the tragic muse;

Even in the vale, where wisdom loves to dwell,

With friendship, peace, and contemplation joined,

How many, racked with honest passions, droop

In deep retired distress; how many stand

Around the death-bed of their dearest friends,

And point the parting anguish! Thought fond man

Of these, and all the thousand nameless ills

That one incessant struggle render life,

One scene of toil, of suffering, and of fate,

Vice in his high career would stand appalled,

And heedless rambling Impulse learn to think;

The conscious heart of Charity would warm,

And her wide wish Benevolence dilate;

The social tear would rise, the social sigh;

And, into clear perfection, gradual bliss,

Refining still, the social passions work.

And here can I forget the generous band

Who, touched with human woe, redressive searched

Into the horrors of the gloomy jail?

Unpitied and unheard where misery moans,

Where sickness pines, where thirst and hunger burn,

And poor misfortune feels the lash of vice;

While in the land of liberty – the land

Whose every street and public meeting glow

With open freedom – little tyrants raged,

Snatched the lean morsel from the starving mouth,

Tore from cold wintry limbs the tattered weed,

Even robbed them of the last of comforts, sleep,

The free-born Briton to the dungeon chained

Or, as the lust of cruelty prevailed,

At pleasure marked him with inglorious stripes,

And crushed out lives, by secret barbarous ways,

That for their country would have toiled or bled.

O great design! if executed well,

With patient care and wisdom-tempered zeal.

Ye sons of mercy! yet resume the search;

Drag forth the legal monsters into light,

Wrench from their hands Oppression's iron rod,

And bid the cruel feel the pains they give.

Much still untouched remains; in this rank age,

Much is the patriot's weeding hand required.

The toils of law – what dark insidious men

Have cumbrous added to perplex the truth

And lengthen simple justice into trade –

How glorious were the day that saw these broke,

And every man within the reach of right!

By wintry famine roused, from all the tract

Of horrid mountains which the shining Alps,

And wavy Apennines, and Pyrenees

Branch out stupendous into distant lands,

Cruel as death, and hungry as the grave!

Burning for blood, bony, and gaunt, and grim!

Assembling wolves in raging troops descend;

And, pouring o'er the country, bear along,

Keen as the north-wind sweeps the glossy snow.

All is their prize. They fasten on the steed,

Press him to earth, and pierce his mighty heart.

Nor can the bull his awful front defend,

Or shake the murdering savages away.

Rapacious, at the mother's throat they fly,

And tear the screaming infant from her breast.

The godlike face of man avails him naught.

Even Beauty, force divine! at whose bright glance

The generous lion stands in softened gaze,

Here bleeds, a hapless undistinguished prey.

But if, apprised of the severe attack,

The country be shut up, lured by the scent,

On churchyards drear (inhuman to relate!)

The disappointed prowlers fall, and dig

The shrouded body from the grave; o'er which,

Mixed with foul shades and frighted ghosts, they howl.

Among those hilly regions, where, embraced

In peaceful vales, the happy Grisons dwell,

Oft, rushing sudden from the loaded cliffs,

Mountains of snow their gathering terrors roll.

From steep to steep, loud thundering, down they come,

A wintry waste in dire commotion all;

And herds, and flocks, and travellers, and swains,

And sometimes whole brigades of marching troops,

Or hamlets sleeping in the dead of night,

Are deep beneath the smothering ruin whelmed.

Now, all amid the rigours of the year,

In the wild depth of winter, while without

The ceaseless winds blow ice, be my retreat,

Between the groaning forest and the shore,

Beat by the boundless multitude of waves,

A rural, sheltered, solitary scene;

Where ruddy fire and beaming tapers join

To cheer the gloom. There studious let me sit,

And hold high converse with the mighty dead –

Sages of ancient time, as gods revered,

As gods beneficent, who blessed mankind

With arts and arms, and humanized a world.

Roused at the inspiring thought, I throw aside

The long-lived volume, and deep-musing hail

The sacred shades that slowly rising pass

Before my wondering eyes. First Socrates,

Who, firmly good in a corrupted state,

Against the rage of tyrants single stood,

Invincible! calm reason's holy law,

That voice of God within the attentive mind,

Obeying, fearless or in life or death:

Great moral teacher! wisest of mankind!

Solon the next, who built his commonweal

On equity's wide base; by tender laws

A lively people curbing, yet undamped

Preserving still that quick peculiar fire,

Whence in the laurelled field of finer arts,

And of bold freedom, they unequalled shone,

The pride of smiling Greece and human-kind.

Lycurgus then, who bowed beneath the force

Of strictest discipline, severely wise,

All human passions. Following him I see,

As at Thermopylae he glorious fell,

The firm devoted chief, who proved by deeds

The hardest lesson which the other taught.

Then Aristides lifts his honest front;

Spotless of heart, to whom the unflattering voice

Of freedom gave the noblest name of Just;

In pure majestic poverty revered;

Who, even his glory to his country's weal

Submitting, swelled a haughty rival's fame.

Reared by his care, of softer ray appears

Cimon, sweet-souled; whose genius, rising strong,

Shook off the load of young debauch; abroad

The scourge of Persian pride, at home the friend

Of every worth and every splendid art;

Modest and simple in the pomp of wealth.

Then the last worthies of declining Greece,

Late-called to glory, in unequal times,

Pensive appear. The fair Corinthian boast,

Timoleon, tempered happy, mild, and firm,

Who wept the brother while the tyrant bled;

And, equal to the best, the Theban pair,

Whose virtues, in heroic concord joined,

Their country raised to freedom, empire, fame.

He too, with whom Athenian honour sunk,

And left a mass of sordid lees behind, –

Phocion the Good; in public life severe,

To virtue still inexorably firm;

But when, beneath his low illustrious roof,

Sweet peace and happy wisdom smoothed his brow,

Not friendship softer was, nor love more kind.

And he, the last of old Lycurgus' sons,

The generous victim to that vain attempt

To save a rotten state – Agis, who saw

Even Sparta's self to servile avarice sunk.

The two Achaian heroes close the train –

Aratus, who a while relumed the soul

Of fondly lingering liberty in Greece;

And he, her darling, as her latest hope,

The gallant Philopoemen, who to arms

Turned the luxurious pomp he could not cure,

Or toiling in his farm, a simple swain,

Or bold and skilful thundering in the field.

Of rougher front, a mighty people come,

A race of heroes! in those virtuous times

Which knew no stain, save that with partial flame

Their dearest country they too fondly loved.

Her better founder first, the Light of Rome,

Numa, who softened her rapacious sons;

Servius, the king who laid the solid base

On which o'er earth the vast republic spread.

Then the great consuls venerable rise:

The public father who the private quelled,

As on the dread tribunal, sternly sad;

He, whom his thankless country could not lose,

Camillus, only vengeful to her foes;

Fabricius, scorner of all-conquering gold,

And Cincinnatus, awful from the plough;

Thy willing victim, Carthage! bursting loose

From all that pleading Nature could oppose,

From a whole city's tears, by rigid faith

Imperious called, and honour's dire command;

Scipio, the gentle chief, humanely brave,

Who soon the race of spotless glory ran,

And, warm in youth, to the poetic shade

With friendship and philosophy retired;

Tully, whose powerful eloquence a while

Restrained the rapid fate of rushing Rome;

Unconquered Cato, virtuous in extreme;

And thou, unhappy Brutus, kind of heart,

Whose steady arm, by awful virtue urged,

Lifted the Roman steel against thy friend.

Thousands besides the tribute of a verse

Demand; but who can count the stars of heaven?

Who sing their influence on this lower world?

Behold, who yonder comes! in sober state,

Fair, mild, and strong as is a vernal sun:

'Tis Phoebus' self, or else the Mantuan swain!

Great Homer too appears, of daring wing,

Parent of song! and equal by his side,

The British Muse; join'd hand in hand they walk,

Darkling, full up the middle steep to fame.

Nor absent are those shades, whose skilful touch

Pathetic drew the impassioned heart, and charmed

Transported Athens with the moral scene;

Nor those who, tuneful, waked the enchanting lyre.

First of your kind! society divine!

Still visit thus my nights, for you reserved,

And mount my soaring soul to thoughts like yours.

Silence, thou lonely power! the door be thine;

See on the hallowed hour that none intrude,

Save a few chosen friends, who sometimes deign

To bless my humble roof, with sense refined,

Learning digested well, exalted faith,

Unstudied wit, and humour ever gay.

Or from the Muses' hill will Pope descend,

To raise the sacred hour, to bid it smile,

And with the social spirit warm the heart;

For, though not sweeter his own Homer sings,

Yet is his life the more endearing song.

Where art thou, Hammond? thou the darling pride,

The friend and lover of the tuneful throng!

Ah! why, dear youth, in all the blooming prime

Of vernal genius, where, disclosing fast,

Each active worth, each manly virtue lay,

Why wert thou ravished from our hope so soon?

What now avails that noble thirst of fame,

Which stung thy fervent breast? that treasured store

Of knowledge, early gained? that eager zeal

To serve thy country, glowing in the band

Of youthful patriots who sustain her name?

What now, alas! that life-diffusing charm

Of sprightly wit? that rapture for the muse,

That heart of friendship, and that soul of joy,

Which bade with softest light thy virtues smile?

Ah! only showed to check our fond pursuits,

And teach our humbled hopes that life is vain.

Thus in some deep retirement would I pass

The winter-glooms with friends of pliant soul,

Or blithe or solemn, as the theme inspired:

With them would search if nature's boundless frame

Was called, late-rising, from the void of night,

Or sprung eternal from the Eternal Mind;

Its life, its laws, its progress, and its end.

Hence larger prospects of the beauteous whole

Would gradual open on our opening minds;

And each diffusive harmony unite

In full perfection to the astonished eye.

Then would we try to scan the moral world,

Which, though to us it seems embroiled, moves on

In higher order, fitted and impelled

By wisdom's finest hand, and issuing all

In general good. The sage historic muse

Should next conduct us through the deeps of time,

Show us how empire grew, declined, and fell

In scattered states; what makes the nations smile,

Improves their soil, and gives them double suns;

And why they pine beneath the brightest skies

In nature's richest lap. As thus we talked,

Our hearts would burn within us, would inhale

That portion of divinity, that ray

Of purest heaven, which lights the public soul

Of patriots and of heroes. But, if doomed

In powerless humble fortune to repress

These ardent risings of the kindling soul,

Then, even superior to ambition, we

Would learn the private virtues – how to glide

Through shades and plains along the smoothest stream

Of rural life: or, snatched away by hope

Through the dim spaces of futurity,

With earnest eye anticipate those scenes

Of happiness and wonder, where the mind,

In endless growth and infinite ascent,

Rises from state to state, and world to world.

But, when with these the serious thought is foiled,

We, shifting for relief, would play the shapes

Of frolic fancy; and incessant form

Those rapid pictures, that assembled train

Of fleet ideas, never joined before,

Whence lively wit excites to gay surprise,

Or folly-painting humour, grave himself,

Calls laughter forth, deep-shaking every nerve.

Meantime the village rouses up the fire;

While, well attested, and as well believed,

Heard solemn, goes the goblin-story round,

Till superstitious horror creeps o'er all.

Or frequent in the sounding hall they wake

The rural gambol. Rustic mirth goes round –

The simple joke that takes the shepherd's heart,

Easily pleased; the long loud laugh sincere;

The kiss, snatched hasty from the sidelong maid

On purpose guardless, or pretending sleep;

The leap, the slap, the haul; and, shook to notes

Of native music, the respondent dance.

Thus jocund fleets with them the winter-night.

The city swarms intense. The public haunt,

Full of each theme and warm with mixed discourse,

Hums indistinct.