The Seasons Read Online

The surging air receives

The plumy burden; and their self-taught wings

Winnow the waving element. On ground

Alighted, bolder up again they lead,

Farther and farther on, the lengthening flight;

Till, vanished every fear, and every power

Roused into life and action, light in air

The acquitted parents see their soaring race,

And, once rejoicing, never know them more.

High from the summit of a craggy cliff,

Hung o'er the deep, such as amazing frowns

On utmost Kilda's shore, whose lonely race

Resign the setting sun to Indian worlds,

The royal eagle draws his vigorous young,

Strong-pounced, and ardent with paternal fire.

Now fit to raise a kingdom of their own,

He drives them from his fort, the towering seat

For ages of his empire – which in peace

Unstained he holds, while many a league to sea

He wings his course, and preys in distant isles.

Should I my steps turn to the rural seat

Whose lofty elms and venerable oaks

Invite the rook, who high amid the boughs

In early Spring his airy city builds,

And ceaseless caws amusive; there, well-pleased,

I might the various polity survey

Of the mixed household-kind. The careful hen

Calls all her chirping family around,

Fed and defended by the fearless cock,

Whose breast with ardour flames, as on he walks

Graceful, and crows defiance. In the pond

The finely-checkered duck before her train

Rows garrulous. The stately-sailing swan

Gives out his snowy plumage to the gale,

And, arching proud his neck, with oary feet

Bears forward fierce, and guards his osier-isle,

Protective of his young. The turkey nigh,

Loud-threatening, reddens; while the peacock spreads

His every-coloured glory to the sun,

And swims in radiant majesty along.

O'er the whole homely scene the cooing dove

Flies thick in amorous chase, and wanton rolls

The glancing eye, and turns the changeful neck.

While thus the gentle tenants of the shade

Indulge their purer loves, the rougher world

Of brutes below rush furious into flame

And fierce desire. Through all his lusty veins

The bull, deep-scorched, the raging passion feels.

Of pasture sick, and negligent of food,

Scarce seen he wades among the yellow broom,

While o'er his ample sides the rambling sprays

Luxuriant shoot; or through the mazy wood

Dejected wanders, nor the enticing bud

Crops, though it presses on his careless sense.

And oft, in jealous maddening fancy wrapt,

He seeks the fight; and, idly-butting, feigns

His rival gored in every knotty trunk.

Him should he meet, the bellowing war begins:

Their eyes flash fury; to the hollowed earth,

Whence the sand flies, they mutter bloody deeds,

And, groaning deep, the impetuous battle mix:

While the fair heifer, balmy-breathing near,

Stands kindling up their rage. The trembling steed,

With this hot impulse seized in every nerve,

Nor heeds the rein, nor hears the sounding thong;

Blows are not felt; but, tossing high his head,

And by the well-known joy to distant plains

Attracted strong, all wild he bursts away;

O'er rocks, and woods, and craggy mountains flies;

And, neighing, on the aerial summit takes

The exciting gale; then, steep-descending, cleaves

The headlong torrents foaming down the hills,

Even where the madness of the straitened stream

Turns in black eddies round: such is the force

With which his frantic heart and sinews swell.

Nor undelighted by the boundless Spring

Are the broad monsters of the foaming deep:

From the deep ooze and gelid cavern roused,

They flounce and tumble in unwieldy joy.

Dire were the strain and dissonant to sing

The cruel raptures of the savage kind:

How, by this flame their native wrath sublimed,

They roam, amid the fury of their heart,

The far-resounding waste in fiercer bands,

And growl their horrid loves. But this the theme

I sing enraptured to the British fair

Forbids, and leads me to the mountain-brow

Where sits the shepherd on the grassy turf,

Inhaling healthful the descending sun.

Around him feeds his many-bleating flock,

Of various cadence; and his sportive lambs,

This way and that convolved in friskful glee,

Their frolics play. And now the sprightly race

Invites them forth; when swift, the signal given,

They start away, and sweep the massy mound

That runs around the hill – the rampart once

Of iron war, in ancient barbarous times,

When disunited Britain ever bled,

Lost in eternal broil, ere yet she grew

To this deep-laid indissoluble state

Where wealth and commerce lift the golden head,

And o'er our labours liberty and law

Impartial watch, the wonder of a world!

What is this mighty breath, ye curious, say,

That in a powerful language, felt, not heard,

Instructs the fowls of heaven, and through their breast

These arts of love diffuses? What, but God?

Inspiring God! who, boundless spirit all

And unremitting energy, pervades,

Adjusts, sustains, and agitates the whole.

He ceaseless works alone, and yet alone

Seems not to work; with such perfection framed

Is this complex, stupendous scheme of things.

But, though concealed, to every purer eye

The informing Author in his works appears:

Chief, lovely Spring, in thee and thy soft scenes

The smiling God is seen – while water, earth,

And air attest his bounty, which exalts

The brute-creation to this finer thought,

And annual melts their undesigning hearts

Profusely thus in tenderness and joy.

Still let my song a nobler note assume,

And sing the infusive force of Spring on man;

When heaven and earth, as if contending, vie

To raise his being and serene his soul.

Can he forbear to join the general smile

Of Nature? Can fierce passions vex his breast,

While every gale is peace, and every grove

Is melody? Hence! from the bounteous walks

Of flowing Spring, ye sordid sons of earth,

Hard, and unfeeling of another's woe,

Or only lavish to yourselves – away!

But come, ye generous minds, in whose wide thought,

Of all his works, Creative Bounty burns

With warmest beam, and on your open front

And liberal eye sits, from his dark retreat

Inviting modest Want. Nor till invoked

Can restless Goodness wait; your active search,

Leaves no cold wintry corner unexplored;

Like silent-working Heaven, surprising oft

The lonely heart with unexpected good.

For you the roving spirit of the wind

Blows Spring abroad; for you the teeming clouds

Descend in gladsome plenty o'er the world;

And the Sun sheds his kindest rays for you,

Ye flower of human race! In these green days,

Reviving Sickness lifts her languid head;

Life flows afresh; and young-eyed Health exalts

The whole creation round. Contentment walks

The sunny glade, and feels an inward bliss

Spring o'er his mind, beyond the power of kings

To purchase. Pure Serenity apace

Induces thought, and contemplation still.

By swift degrees the love of nature works,

And warms the bosom; till at last, sublimed

To rapture and enthusiastic heat,

We feel the present Deity, and taste

The joy of God to see a happy world!

These are the sacred feelings of thy heart,

Thy heart informed by reason's purer ray,

O Lyttelton, the friend! Thy passions thus

And meditations vary, as at large,

Courting the muse, through Hagley Park you stray –

Thy British Tempè! There along the dale

With woods o'erhung, and shagged with mossy rocks

Whence on each hand the gushing waters play,

And down the rough cascade white-dashing fall

Or gleam in lengthened vista through the trees,

You silent steal; or sit beneath the shade

Of solemn oaks, that tuft the swelling mounts

Thrown graceful round by Nature's careless hand,

And pensive listen to the various voice

Of rural peace – the herds, the flocks, the birds,

The hollow-whispering breeze, the plaint of rills,

That, purling down amid the twisted roots

Which creep around, their dewy murmurs shake

On the soothed ear. From these abstracted oft,

You wander through the philosophic world;

Where in bright train continual wonders rise

Or to the curious or the pious eye.

And oft, conducted by historic truth,

You tread the long extent of backward time,

Planning with warm benevolence of mind

And honest zeal, unwarped by party-rage,

Britannia's weal, – how from the venal gulf

To raise her virtue and her arts revive.

Or, turning thence thy view, these graver thoughts

The muses charm – while, with sure taste refined,

You draw the inspiring breath of ancient song,

Till nobly rises emulous thy own.

Perhaps thy loved Lucinda shares thy walk,

With soul to thine attuned. Then Nature all

Wears to the lover's eye a look of love;

And all the tumult of a guilty world,

Tost by ungenerous passions, sinks away.

The tender heart is animated peace;

And, as it pours its copious treasures forth

In varied converse, softening every theme,

You, frequent pausing, turn, and from her eyes,

Where meekened sense and amiable grace

And lively sweetness dwell, enraptured drink

That nameless spirit of ethereal joy,

Inimitable happiness! which love

Alone bestows, and on a favoured few.

Meantime you gain the height, from whose fair brow

The bursting prospect spreads immense around;

And, snatched o'er hill and dale, and wood and lawn,

And verdant field, and darkening heath between,

And villages embosomed soft in trees,

And spiry towns by surging columns marked

Of household smoke, your eye excursive roams –

Wide-stretching from the Hall in whose kind haunt

The hospitable Genius lingers still,

To where the broken landscape, by degrees

Ascending, roughens into rigid hills

O'er which the Cambrian mountains, like far clouds

That skirt the blue horizon, dusky rise.

Flushed by the spirit of the genial year,

Now from the virgin's cheek a fresher bloom

Shoots less and less the live carnation round;

Her lips blush deeper sweets; she breathes of youth;

The shining moisture swells into her eyes

In brighter flow; her wishing bosom heaves

With palpitations wild; kind tumults seize

Her veins, and all her yielding soul is love.

From the keen gaze her lover turns away,

Full of the dear ecstatic power, and sick

With sighing languishment. Ah then, ye fair!

Be greatly cautious of your sliding hearts:

Dare not the infectious sigh; the pleading look,

Downcast and low, in meek submission dressed,

But full of guile. Let not the fervent tongue,

Prompt to deceive with adulation smooth,

Gain on your purposed will. Nor in the bower

Where woodbines flaunt and roses shed a couch,

While evening draws her crimson curtains round,

Trust your soft minutes with betraying man.

And let the aspiring youth beware of love,

Of the smooth glance beware; for 'tis too late,

When on his heart the torrent-softness pours.

Then wisdom prostrate lies, and fading fame

Dissolves in air away; while the fond soul,

Wrapt in gay visions of unreal bliss,

Still paints the illusive form, the kindling grace,

The enticing smile, the modest-seeming eye,

Beneath whose beauteous beams, belying Heaven,

Lurk searchless cunning, cruelty, and death:

And still, false-warbling in his cheated ear,

Her siren voice enchanting draws him on

To guileful shores and meads of fatal joy.

Even present, in the very lap of love

Inglorious laid – while music flows around,

Perfumes, and oils, and wine, and wanton hours –

Amid the roses fierce repentance rears

Her snaky crest: a quick-returning pang

Shoots through the conscious heart, where honour still

And great design, against the oppressive load

Of luxury, by fits, impatient heave.

But absent, what fantastic woes, aroused,

Rage in each thought, by restless musing fed,

Chill the warm cheek, and blast the bloom of life!

Neglected fortune flies; and, sliding swift,

Prone into ruin fall his scorned affairs.

'Tis nought but gloom around: the darkened sun

Loses his light. The rosy-bosomed Spring

To weeping fancy pines; and yon bright arch,

Contracted, bends into a dusky vault.

All Nature fades extinct; and she alone

Heard, felt, and seen, possesses every thought,

Fills every sense, and pants in every vein.

Books are but formal dulness, tedious friends;

And sad amid the social band he sits,

Lonely and unattentive. From the tongue

The unfinish'd period falls: while, borne away

On swelling thought, his wafted spirit flies

To the vain bosom of his distant fair;

And leaves the semblance of a lover, fixed

In melancholy site, with head declined,

And love-dejected eyes. Sudden he starts,

Shook from his tender trance, and restless runs

To glimmering shades and sympathetic glooms,

Where the dun umbrage o'er the falling stream

Romantic hangs; there through the pensive dusk

Strays, in heart-thrilling meditation lost,

Indulging all to love – or on the bank

Thrown, amid drooping lilies, swells the breeze

With sighs unceasing, and the brook with tears.

Thus in soft anguish he consumes the day,

Nor quits his deep retirement till the moon

Peeps through the chambers of the fleecy east,

Enlightened by degrees, and in her train

Leads on the gentle hours; then forth he walks,

Beneath the trembling languish of her beam,

With softened soul, and woos the bird of eve

To mingle woes with his; or, while the world

And all the sons of care lie hushed in sleep,

Associates with the midnight shadows drear,

And, sighing to the lonely taper, pours

His idly-tortured heart into the page

Meant for the moving messenger of love,

Where rapture burns on rapture, every line

With rising frenzy fired. But if on bed

Delirious flung, sleep from his pillow flies.

All night he tosses, nor the balmy power

In any posture finds; till the grey morn

Lifts her pale lustre on the paler wretch,

Exanimate by love – and then perhaps

Exhausted nature sinks a while to rest,

Still interrupted by distracted dreams

That o'er the sick imagination rise

And in black colours paint the mimic scene.

Oft with the enchantress of his soul he talks;

Sometimes in crowds distressed; or, if retired

To secret-winding flower-enwoven bowers,

Far from the dull impertinence of man,

Just as he, credulous, his endless cares

Begins to lose in blind oblivious love,

Snatched from her yielded hand, he knows not how,

Through forests huge, and long untravelled heaths

With desolation brown, he wanders waste,

In night and tempest wrapt; or shrinks aghast

Back from the bending precipice; or wades

The turbid stream below, and strives to reach

The farther shore where, succourless and sad,

She with extended arms his aid implores,

But strives in vain: borne by the outrageous flood

To distance down, he rides the ridgy wave,

Or whelmed beneath the boiling eddy sinks.

These are the charming agonies of love,

Whose misery delights. But through the heart

Should jealousy its venom once diffuse,

'Tis then delightful misery no more,

But agony unmixed, incessant gall,

Corroding every thought, and blasting all

Love's Paradise. Ye fairy prospects, then,

Ye bed of roses and ye bowers of joy,

Farewell! Ye gleamings of departed peace,

Shine out your last! The yellow-tinging plague

Internal vision taints, and in a night

Of livid gloom imagination wraps.

Ah then! instead of love-enlivened cheeks,

Of sunny features, and of ardent eyes

With flowing rapture bright, dark looks succeed,

Suffused, and glaring with untender fire,

A clouded aspect, and a burning cheek

Where the whole poisoned soul malignant sits,

And frightens love away. Ten thousand fears

Invented wild, ten thousand frantic views

Of horrid rivals hanging on the charms

For which he melts in fondness, eat him up

With fervent anguish and consuming rage.

In vain reproaches lend their idle aid,

Deceitful pride, and resolution frail,

Giving false peace a moment. Fancy pours

Afresh her beauties on his busy thought,

Her first endearments twining round the soul

With all the witchcraft of ensnaring love.

Straight the fierce storm involves his mind anew,

Flames through the nerves, and boils along the veins;

While anxious doubt distracts the tortured heart:

For even the sad assurance of his fears

Were peace to what he feels. Thus the warm youth,

Whom love deludes into his thorny wilds

Through flowery-tempting paths, or leads a life

Of fevered rapture or of cruel care –

His brightest aims extinguished all, and all

His lively moments running down to waste.

But happy they! the happiest of their kind!

Whom gentler stars unite, and in one fate

Their hearts, their fortunes, and their beings blend.

'Tis not the coarser tie of human laws,

Unnatural oft, and foreign to the mind,

That binds their peace, but harmony itself,

Attuning all their passions into love;

Where friendship full-exerts her softest power,

Perfect esteem enlivened by desire

Ineffable and sympathy of soul,

Thought meeting thought, and will preventing will,

With boundless confidence: for nought but love

Can answer love, and render bliss secure.

Let him, ungenerous, who, alone intent

To bless himself, from sordid parents buys

The loathing virgin, in eternal care

Well-merited consume his nights and days;

Let barbarous nations, whose inhuman love

Is wild desire, fierce as the suns they feel;

Let eastern tyrants from the light of heaven

Seclude their bosom-slaves, meanly possessed

Of a mere lifeless, violated form:

While those whom love cements in holy faith

And equal transport free as nature live,

Disdaining fear. What is the world to them,

Its pomp, its pleasure, and its nonsense all,

Who in each other clasp whatever fair

High fancy forms, and lavish hearts can wish?

Something than beauty dearer, should they look

Or on the mind or mind-illumined face;

Truth, goodness, honour, harmony, and love,

The richest bounty of indulgent Heaven!

Meantime a smiling offspring rises round,

And mingles both their graces. By degrees

The human blossom blows; and every day,

Soft as it rolls along, shows some new charm,

The father's lustre and the mother's bloom.

Then infant reason grows apace, and calls

For the kind hand of an assiduous care.

Delightful task! to rear the tender thought,

To teach the young idea how to shoot,

To pour the fresh instruction o'er the mind,

To breathe the enlivening spirit, and to fix

The generous purpose in the glowing breast.

Oh, speak the joy! ye, whom the sudden tear

Surprises often, while you look around,

And nothing strikes your eye but sights of bliss,

All various Nature pressing on the heart –

An elegant sufficiency, content,

Retirement, rural quiet, friendship, books,

Ease and alternate labour, useful life,

Progressive virtue, and approving Heaven!

These are the matchless joys of virtuous love;

And thus their moments fly. The Seasons thus,

As ceaseless round a jarring world they roll,

Still find them happy; and consenting Spring

Sheds her own rosy garland on their heads:

Till evening comes at last, serene and mild;

When after the long vernal day of life,

Enamoured more, as more remembrance swells

With many a proof of recollected love,

Together down they sink in social sleep;

Together freed, their gentle spirits fly

To scenes where love and bliss immortal reign.

Summer

The Argument

The subject proposed.