The Seasons Read Online

The sons of riot flow

Down the loose stream of false enchanted joy

To swift destruction. On the rankled soul

The gaming fury falls; and in one gulf

Of total ruin, honour, virtue, peace,

Friends, families, and fortune headlong sink.

Up springs the dance along the lighted dome,

Mixed and evolved a thousand sprightly ways.

The glittering court effuses every pomp;

The circle deepens; beamed from gaudy robes,

Tapers, and sparkling gems, and radiant eyes,

A soft effulgence o'er the palace waves –

While, a gay insect in his summer shine,

The fop, light-fluttering, spreads his mealy wings.

Dread o'er the scene the ghost of Hamlet stalks;

Othello rages; poor Monimia mourns;

And Belvidera pours her soul in love.

Terror alarms the breast; the comely tear

Steals o'er the cheek: or else the comic muse

Holds to the world a picture of itself,

And raises sly the fair impartial laugh.

Sometimes she lifts her strain, and paints the scenes

Of beauteous life – whate'er can deck mankind,

Or charm the heart, in generous Bevil showed.

O thou, whose wisdom, solid yet refined,

Whose patriot virtues, and consummate skill

To touch the finer springs that move the world,

Joined to whate'er the graces can bestow,

And all Apollo's animating fire

Give thee with pleasing dignity to shine

At once the guardian, ornament, and joy

Of polished life – permit the rural muse,

O Chesterfield, to grace with thee her song.

Ere to the shades again she humbly flies,

Indulge her fond ambition, in thy train

(For every muse has in thy train a place)

To mark thy various full-accomplished mind –

To mark that spirit which with British scorn

Rejects the allurements of corrupted power;

That elegant politeness which excels,

Even in the judgement of presumptuous France,

The boasted manners of her shining court;

That wit, the vivid energy of sense,

The truth of nature, which with Attic point,

And kind well-tempered satire, smoothly keen,

Steals through the soul and without pain corrects.

Or, rising thence with yet a brighter flame,

O let me hail thee on some glorious day,

When to the listening senate ardent crowd

Britannia's sons to hear her pleaded cause!

Then, dressed by thee, more amiably fair,

Truth the soft robe of mild persuasion wears;

Thou to assenting reason giv'st again

Her own enlightened thoughts; called from the heart,

The obedient passions on thy voice attend;

And even reluctant party feels a while

Thy gracious power, as through the varied maze

Of eloquence, now smooth, now quick, now strong,

Profound and clear, you roll the copious flood.

To thy loved haunt return, my happy muse:

For now, behold! the joyous Winter days,

Frosty, succeed; and through the blue serene,

For sight too fine, the ethereal nitre flies,

Killing infectious damps, and the spent air

Storing afresh with elemental life.

Close crowds the shining atmosphere; and binds

Our strengthened bodies in its cold embrace,

Constringent; feeds, and animates our blood;

Refines our spirits, through the new-strung nerves

In swifter sallies darting to the brain –

Where sits the soul, intense, collected, cool,

Bright as the skies, and as the season keen.

All nature feels the renovating force

Of Winter – only to the thoughtless eye

In ruin seen. The frost-concocted glebe

Draws in abundant vegetable soul,

And gathers vigour for the coming year;

A stronger glow sits on the lively cheek

Of ruddy fire; and luculent along

The purer rivers flow: their sullen deeps,

Transparent, open to the shepherd's gaze,

And murmur hoarser at the fixing frost.

What art thou, frost? and whence are thy keen stores

Derived, thou secret all-invading power,

Whom even the illusive fluid cannot fly?

Is not thy potent energy, unseen,

Myriads of little salts, or hooked, or shaped

Like double wedges, and diffused immense

Through water, earth, and ether? Hence at eve,

Steamed eager from the red horizon round,

With the fierce rage of Winter deep suffused,

An icy gale, oft shifting, o'er the pool

Breathes a blue film, and in its mid-career

Arrests the bickering stream. The loosened ice,

Let down the flood and half dissolved by day,

Rustles no more; but to the sedgy bank

Fast grows, or gathers round the pointed stone,

A crystal pavement, by the breath of heaven

Cemented firm; till, seized from shore to shore,

The whole imprisoned river growls below.

Loud rings the frozen earth, and hard reflects

A double noise; while, at his evening watch,

The village-dog deters the nightly thief;

The heifer lows; the distant waterfall

Swells in the breeze; and with the hasty tread

Of traveller the hollow-sounding plain

Shakes from afar. The full ethereal round,

Infinite worlds disclosing to the view,

Shines out intensely keen, and, all one cope

Of starry glitter, glows from pole to pole.

From pole to pole the rigid influence falls

Through the still night incessant, heavy, strong,

And seizes nature fast. It freezes on,

Till morn, late-rising o'er the drooping world,

Lifts her pale eye unjoyous. Then appears

The various labour of the silent night –

Prone from the dripping eave, and dumb cascade,

Whose idle torrents only seem to roar,

The pendent icicle; the frost-work fair,

Where transient hues and fancied figures rise;

Wide-spouted o'er the hill the frozen brook,

A livid tract, cold-gleaming on the morn;

The forest bent beneath the plumy wave;

And by the frost refined the whiter snow

Incrusted hard, and sounding to the tread

Of early shepherd, as he pensive seeks

His pining flock, or from the mountain top,

Pleased with the slippery surface, swift descends.

On blithesome frolics bent, the youthful swains,

While every work of man is laid at rest,

Fond o'er the river crowd, in various sport

And revelry dissolved; where, mixing glad,

Happiest of all the train! the raptured boy

Lashes the whirling top. Or, where the Rhine

Branched out in many a long canal extends,

From every province swarming, void of care,

Batavia rushes forth; and, as they sweep

On sounding skates a thousand different ways

In circling poise swift as the winds along,

The then gay land is maddened all to joy.

Nor less the northern courts, wide o'er the snow,

Pour a new pomp. Eager, on rapid sleds,

Their vigorous youth in bold contention wheel

The long-resounding course. Meantime, to raise

The manly strife, with highly blooming charms,

Flushed by the season, Scandinavia's dames

Or Russia's buxom daughters glow around.

Pure, quick, and sportful is the wholesome day;

But soon elapsed. The horizontal sun

Broad o'er the south hangs at his utmost noon;

And ineffectual strikes the gelid cliff.

His azure gloss the mountain still maintains,

Nor feels the feeble touch. Perhaps the vale

Relents awhile to the reflected ray;

Or from the forest falls the clustered snow,

Myriads of gems, that in the waving gleam

Gay-twinkle as they scatter. Thick around

Thunders the sport of those who with the gun,

And dog impatient bounding at the shot,

Worse than the season desolate the fields,

And, adding to the ruins of the year,

Distress the footed or the feathered game.

But what is this? Our infant Winter sinks

Divested of his grandeur should our eye

Astonished shoot into the frigid zone,

Where for relentless months continual night

Holds o'er the glittering waste her starry reign.

There, through the prison of unbounded wilds,

Barred by the hand of nature from escape,

Wide roams the Russian exile. Naught around

Strikes his sad eye but deserts lost in snow,

And heavy-loaded groves, and solid floods

That stretch athwart the solitary vast

Their icy horrors to the frozen main,

And cheerless towns far distant – never blessed,

Save when its annual course the caravan

Bends to the golden coast of rich Cathay,

With news of human-kind. Yet there life glows;

Yet, cherished there, beneath the shining waste

The furry nations harbour – tipt with jet,

Fair ermines spotless as the snows they press;

Sables of glossy black; and, dark-embrowned,

Or beauteous freakt with many a mingled hue,

Thousands besides, the costly pride of courts.

There, warm together pressed, the trooping deer

Sleep on the new-fallen snows; and, scarce his head

Raised o'er the heapy wreath, the branching elk

Lies slumbering sullen in the white abyss.

The ruthless hunter wants nor dogs nor toils,

Nor with the dread of sounding bows he drives

The fearful flying race – with ponderous clubs,

As weak against the mountain-heaps they push

Their beating breast in vain, and piteous bray,

He lays them quivering on the ensanguined snows,

And with loud shouts rejoicing bears them home.

There, through the piny forest half-absorpt,

Rough tenant of these shades, the shapeless bear,

With dangling ice all horrid, stalks forlorn;

Slow-paced, and sourer as the storms increase,

He makes his bed beneath the inclement drift,

And, with stern patience, scorning weak complaint,

Hardens his heart against assailing want.

Wide o'er the spacious regions of the north,

That see Boötes urge his tardy wain,

A boisterous race, by frosty Caurus pierced,

Who little pleasure know and fear no pain,

Prolific swarm. They once relumed the flame

Of lost mankind in polished slavery sunk;

Drove martial horde on horde, with dreadful sweep

Resistless rushing o'er the enfeebled south,

And gave the vanquished world another form.

Not such the sons of Lapland: wisely they

Despise the insensate barbarous trade of war;

They ask no more than simple Nature gives;

They love their mountains and enjoy their storms.

No false desires, no pride-created wants,

Disturb the peaceful current of their time,

And through the restless ever-tortured maze

Of pleasure or ambition bid it rage.

Their reindeer form their riches. These their tents,

Their robes, their beds, and all their homely wealth

Supply, their wholesome fare, and cheerful cups.

Obsequious at their call, the docile tribe

Yield to the sled their necks, and whirl them swift

O'er hill and dale, heaped into one expanse

Of marbled snow, or, far as eye can sweep,

With a blue crust of ice unbounded glazed.

By dancing meteors then, that ceaseless shake

A waving blaze refracted o'er the heavens,

And vivid moons, and stars that keener play

With doubled lustre from the radiant waste,

Even in the depth of polar night they find

A wondrous day – enough to light the chase

Or guide their daring steps to Finland fairs.

Wished spring returns; and from the hazy south,

While dim Aurora slowly moves before,

The welcome sun, just verging up at first,

By small degrees extends the swelling curve;

Till, seen at last for gay rejoicing months,

Still round and round his spiral course he winds,

And, as he nearly dips his flaming orb,

Wheels up again and re-ascends the sky.

In that glad season, from the lakes and floods,

Where pure Niëmi's fairy mountains rise,

And fringed with roses Tenglio rolls his stream,

They draw the copious fry. With these at eve

They cheerful-loaded to their tents repair,

Where, all day long in useful cares employed,

Their kind unblemished wives the fire prepare.

Thrice happy race! by poverty secured

From legal plunder and rapacious power,

In whom fell interest never yet has sown

The seeds of vice, whose spotless swains ne'er knew

Injurious deed, nor, blasted by the breath

Of faithless love, their blooming daughters woe.

Still pressing on, beyond Tornêa's lake,

And Hecla flaming through a waste of snow,

And farthest Greenland, to the pole itself,

Where, failing gradual, life at length goes out,

The muse expands her solitary flight;

And, hovering o'er the wild stupendous scene,

Beholds new seas beneath another sky.

Throned in his palace of cerulean ice,

Here Winter holds his unrejoicing court;

And through his airy hall the loud misrule

Of driving tempest is for ever heard:

Here the grim tyrant meditates his wrath;

Here arms his winds with all-subduing frost;

Moulds his fierce hail, and treasures up his snows,

With which he now oppresses half the globe.

Thence winding eastward to the Tartar's coast,

She sweeps the howling margin of the main;

Where, undissolving from the first of time,

Snows swell on snows amazing to the sky;

And icy mountains high on mountains piled

Seem to the shivering sailor from afar,

Shapeless and white, an atmosphere of clouds.

Projected huge and horrid o'er the surge,

Alps frown on Alps; or, rushing hideous down,

As if old Chaos was again returned,

Wide-rend the deep and shake the solid pole.

Ocean itself no longer can resist

The binding fury; but, in all its rage

Of tempest taken by the boundless frost,

Is many a fathom to the bottom chained,

And bid to roar no more – a bleak expanse

Shagged o'er with wavy rocks, cheerless, and void

Of every life, that from the dreary months

Flies conscious southward. Miserable they!

Who, here entangled in the gathering ice,

Take their last look of the descending sun;

While, full of death and fierce with tenfold frost,

The long long night, incumbent o'er their heads,

Falls horrible! Such was the Briton's fate,

As with first prow (what have not Britons dared?)

He for the passage sought, attempted since

So much in vain, and seeming to be shut

By jealous nature with eternal bars.

In these fell regions, in Arzina caught,

And to the stony deep his idle ship

Immediate sealed, he with his hapless crew,

Each full exerted at his several task,

Froze into statues – to the cordage glued

The sailor, and the pilot to the helm.

Hard by these shores, where scarce his freezing stream

Rolls the wild Oby, live the last of men;

And, half enlivened by the distant sun,

That rears and ripens man as well as plants,

Here human nature wears its rudest form.

Deep from the piercing Season sunk in caves,

Here by dull fires and with unjoyous cheer

They waste the tedious gloom: immersed in furs

Doze the gross race – nor sprightly jest, nor song,

Nor tenderness they know, nor aught of life

Beyond the kindred bears that stalk without –

Till Morn at length, her roses drooping all,

Sheds a long twilight brightening o'er their fields

And calls the quivered savage to the chase.

What cannot active government perform,

New-moulding man? Wide-stretching from these shores,

A people savage from remotest time,

A huge neglected empire, one vast mind

By heaven inspired from Gothic darkness called.

Immortal Peter! first of monarchs! He

His stubborn country tamed, – her rocks, her fens,

Her floods, her seas, her ill-submitting sons;

And, while the fierce barbarian he subdued,

To more exalted soul he raised the man.

Ye shades of ancient heroes, ye who toiled

Through long successive ages to build up

A labouring plan of state, behold at once

The wonder done! behold the matchless prince!

Who left his native throne, where reigned till then

A mighty shadow of unreal power;

Who greatly spurned the slothful pomp of courts;

And, roaming every land, in every port

His sceptre laid aside, with glorious hand

Unwearied plying the mechanic tool,

Gathered the seeds of trade, of useful arts,

Of civil wisdom, and of martial skill.

Charged with the stores of Europe home he goes!

Then cities rise amid the illumined waste;

O'er joyless deserts smiles the rural reign;

Far-distant flood to flood is social joined;

The astonished Euxine hears the Baltic roar;

Proud navies ride on seas that never foamed

With daring keel before; and armies stretch

Each way their dazzling files, repressing here

The frantic Alexander of the north,

And awing there stern Othman's shrinking sons.

Sloth flies the land, and ignorance and vice,

Of old dishonour proud: it glows around,

Taught by the royal hand that roused the whole,

One scene of arts, of arms, of rising trade –

For, what his wisdom planned and power enforced,

More potent still his great example showed.

Muttering, the winds at eve with blunted point

Blow hollow-blustering from the south. Subdued,

The frost resolves into a trickling thaw.

Spotted the mountains shine: loose sleet descends,

And floods the country round. The rivers swell,

Of bonds impatient. Sudden from the hills,

O'er rocks and woods, in broad brown cataracts,

A thousand snow-fed torrents shoot at once;

And, where they rush, the wide-resounding plain

Is left one slimy waste. Those sullen seas,

That wash'd the ungenial pole, will rest no more

Beneath the shackles of the mighty north,

But, rousing all their waves, resistless heave.

And, hark! the lengthening roar continuous runs

Athwart the rifted deep: at once it bursts,

And piles a thousand mountains to the clouds.

Ill fares the bark, with trembling wretches charged,

That, tossed amid the floating fragments, moors

Beneath the shelter of an icy isle,

While night o'erwhelms the sea, and horror looks

More horrible. Can human force endure

The assembled mischiefs that besiege them round? –

Heart-gnawing hunger, fainting weariness,

The roar of winds and waves, the crush of ice,

Now ceasing, now renewed with louder rage,

And in dire echoes bellowing round the main.

More to embroil the deep, Leviathan

And his unwieldy train in dreadful sport

Tempest the loosened brine; while through the gloom

Far from the bleak inhospitable shore,

Loading the winds, is heard the hungry howl

Of famished monsters, there awaiting wrecks.

Yet Providence, that ever-waking Eye,

Looks down with pity on the feeble toil

Of mortals lost to hope, and lights them safe

Through all this dreary labyrinth of fate.

'Tis done! Dread Winter spreads his latest glooms,

And reigns tremendous o'er the conquered year.

How dead the vegetable kingdom lies!

How dumb the tuneful! Horror wide extends

His desolate domain. Behold, fond man!

See here thy pictured life; pass some few years,

Thy flowering Spring, thy Summer's ardent strength,

Thy sober Autumn fading into age,

And pale concluding Winter comes at last

And shuts the scene. Ah! whither now are fled.

Those dreams of greatness? those unsolid hopes

Of happiness? those longings after fame?

Those restless cares? those busy bustling days?

Those gay-spent festive nights? those veering thoughts,

Lost between good and ill, that shared thy life?

All now are vanished! Virtue sole survives –

Immortal, never-failing friend of man,

His guide to happiness on high. And see!

'Tis come, the glorious morn! the second birth

Of heaven and earth! awakening nature hears

The new-creating word, and starts to life

In every heightened form, from pain and death

For ever free. The great eternal scheme,

Involving all, and in a perfect whole

Uniting, as the prospect wider spreads,

To reason's eye refined clears up apace.

Ye vainly wise! ye blind presumptuous! now,

Confounded in the dust, adore that Power

And Wisdom – oft arraigned: see now the cause

Why unassuming worth in secret lived

And died neglected: why the good man's share

In life was gall and bitterness of soul:

Why the lone widow and her orphans pined

In starving solitude; while luxury

In palaces lay straining her low thought

To form unreal wants: why heaven-born, truth

And moderation fair wore the red marks

Of superstition's scourge; why licensed pain,

That cruel spoiler, that embosomed foe,

Embittered all our bliss. Ye good distressed!

Ye noble few! who here unbending stand

Beneath life's pressure, yet bear up a while,

And what your bounded view, which only saw

A little part, deemed evil is no more:

The storms of wintry time will quickly pass,

And one unbounded Spring encircle all.

Notes

1 Which blows constantly between the tropics from the east, or the collateral points, the north-east and south-east; caused by the pressure of the rarefied air on that before it, according to the diurnal motion of the sun from east to west.

2 In all places between the tropics the sun, as he passes and repasses in his annual motion, is twice a year perpendicular, which produces this effect.

3 The hippopotamus, or river-horse.

4 In all the regions of the torrid zone the birds, though more beautiful in their plumage, are observed to be less melodious than ours.

5 The river that runs through Siam: on whose banks a vast multitude of those insects called fireflies make a beautiful appearance in the night.

6 The river of the Amazons.

7 Terms for particular storms or hurricanes known only between the tropics.

8 Terms for particular storms or hurricanes known only between the tropics.

9 Called by sailors the ox-eye, being in appearance at first no bigger.

10 Vasco de Gama, the first that sailed round Africa, by the Cape of Good Hope, to the East Indies.

11 Don Henry, third son to John the First, King of Portugal. His strong genius to the discovery of new countries was the source of all the modern improvements in navigation.

12 These are the causes supposed to be the first origin of the Plague, in Doctor Mead's elegant book on that subject.

13 The Venus of Medici.

14 The old name of Richmond, signifying in Saxon shining or splendour.

15 Highgate and Hampstead.

16 Algernon Sidney.

17 Anthony Ashley Cooper, Earl of Shaftesbury.

18 The mountain called by that name in the lesser Asia.

19 The Moscovites call the Riphean mountains Weliki Camenypoys, that is, the great stony girdle; because they suppose them to encompass the whole Earth.

20 A range of mountains in Africa that surround almost all Monomotapa.

21 The Temple of Virtue in Stowe Gardens.