The Seasons Read Online

In vain I sigh,

And restless turn, and look around for night:

Night is far off; and hotter hours approach.

Thrice happy he, who on the sunless side

Of a romantic mountain, forest-crowned,

Beneath the whole collected shade reclines;

Or in the gelid caverns, woodbine-wrought

And fresh bedewed with ever-spouting streams,

Sits coolly calm; while all the world without,

Unsatisfied and sick, tosses in noon.

Emblem instructive of the virtuous man,

Who keeps his tempered mind serene and pure,

And every passion aptly harmonized

Amid a jarring world with vice inflamed.

Welcome, ye shades! ye bowery thickets, hail!

Ye lofty pines! ye venerable oaks!

Ye ashes wild, resounding o'er the steep!

Delicious is your shelter to the soul

As to the hunted hart the sallying spring

Or stream full-flowing, that his swelling sides

Laves as he floats along the herbaged brink.

Cool through the nerves your pleasing comfort glides;

The heart beats glad; the fresh-expanded eye

And ear resume their watch; the sinews knit;

And life shoots swift through all the lightened limbs

Around the adjoining brook, that purls along

The vocal grove, now fretting o'er a rock,

Now scarcely moving through a reedy pool,

Now starting to a sudden stream, and now

Gently diffused into a limpid plain,

A various group the herds and flocks compose,

Rural confusion! On the grassy bank

Some ruminating lie, while others stand

Half in the flood and, often bending, sip

The circling surface. In the middle droops

The strong laborious ox, of honest front,

Which incomposed he shakes; and from his sides

The troublous insects lashes with his tail,

Returning still. Amid his subjects safe

Slumbers the monarch-swain, his careless arm

Thrown round his head on downy moss sustained;

Here laid his scrip with wholesome viands filled,

There, listening every noise, his watchful dog.

Light fly his slumbers, if perchance a flight

Of angry gad-flies fasten on the herd,

That startling scatters from the shallow brook

In search of lavish stream. Tossing the foam,

They scorn the keeper's voice, and scour the plain

Through all the bright severity of noon;

While from their labouring breasts a hollow moan

Proceeding runs low-bellowing round the hills.

Oft in this season too, the horse, provoked,

While his big sinews full of spirits swell,

Trembling with vigour, in the heat of blood

Springs the high fence, and, o'er the field effused,

Darts on the gloomy flood with steadfast eye

And heart estranged to fear: his nervous chest,

Luxuriant and erect, the seat of strength,

Bears down the opposing stream; quenchless his thirst,

He takes the river at redoubled draughts,

And with wide nostrils, snorting, skims the wave.

Still let me pierce into the midnight depth

Of yonder grove, of wildest largest growth,

That, forming high in air a woodland quire,

Nods o'er the mount beneath. At every step,

Solemn and slow the shadows blacker fall,

And all is awful listening gloom around.

These are the haunts of meditation, these

The scenes where ancient bards the inspiring breath

Ecstatic felt, and, from this world retired,

Conversed with angels and immortal forms,

On gracious errands bent – to save the fall

Of virtue struggling on the brink of vice;

In waking whispers and repeated dreams

To hint pure thought, and warn the favoured soul,

For future trials fated, to prepare;

To prompt the poet, who devoted gives

His muse to better themes; to soothe the pangs

Of dying worth, and from the patriot's breast

(Backward to mingle in detested war,

But foremost when engaged) to turn the death;

And numberless such offices of love,

Daily and nightly, zealous to perform.

Shook sudden from the bosom of the sky,

A thousand shapes or glide athwart the dusk

Or stalk majestic on. Deep-roused, I feel

A sacred terror, a severe delight,

Creep through my mortal frame; and thus, methinks,

A voice, than human more, the abstracted ear

Of fancy strikes – »Be not of us afraid,

Poor kindred man! thy fellow-creatures, we

From the same Parent-Power our beings drew,

The same our Lord and laws and great pursuit.

Once some of us, like thee, through stormy life

Toiled tempest-beaten ere we could attain

This holy calm, this harmony of mind,

Where purity and peace immingle charms.

Then fear not us; but with responsive song,

Amid these dim recesses, undisturbed

By noisy folly and discordant vice,

Of Nature sing with us, and Nature's God.

Here frequent, at the visionary hour,

When musing midnight reigns or silent noon,

Angelic harps are in full concert heard,

And voices chaunting from the wood-crown'd hill,

The deepening dale, or inmost sylvan glade:

A privilege bestow'd by us alone

On contemplation, or the hallow'd ear

Of poet swelling to seraphic strain.«

And art thou, Stanley, of that sacred band?

Alas! for us too soon! Though raised above

The reach of human pain, above the flight

Of human joy, yet with a mingled ray

Of sadly pleased remembrance, must thou feel

A mother's love, a mother's tender woe –

Who seeks thee still in many a former scene,

Seeks thy fair form, thy lovely beaming eyes,

Thy pleasing converse, by gay lively sense

Inspired, where moral wisdom mildly shone

Without the toil of art, and virtue glowed

In all her smiles without forbidding pride.

But, O thou best of parents! wipe thy tears;

Or rather to parental Nature pay

The tears of grateful joy, who for a while

Lent thee this younger self, this opening bloom

Of thy enlightened mind and gentle worth.

Believe the muse – the wintry blast of death

Kills not the buds of virtue; no, they spread

Beneath the heavenly beam of brighter suns

Through endless ages into higher powers.

Thus up the mount, in airy vision rapt,

I stray, regardless whither; till the sound

Of a near fall of water every sense

Wakes from the charm of thought: swift-shrinking back,

I check my steps and view the broken scene.

Smooth to the shelving brink a copious flood

Rolls fair and placid; where, collected all

In one impetuous torrent, down the steep

It thundering shoots, and shakes the country round.

At first, an azure sheet, it rushes broad;

Then, whitening by degrees as prone it falls,

And from the loud-resounding rocks below

Dashed in a cloud of foam, it sends aloft

A hoary mist and forms a ceaseless shower.

Nor can the tortured wave here find repose;

But, raging still amid the shaggy rocks,

Now flashes o'er the scattered fragments, now

Aslant the hollow channel rapid darts;

And, falling fast from gradual slope to slope,

With wild infracted course and lessened roar

It gains a safer bed, and steals at last

Along the mazes of the quiet vale.

Invited from the cliff, to whose dark brow

He clings, the steep-ascending eagle soars

With upward pinions through the flood of day,

And, giving full his bosom to the blaze,

Gains on the Sun; while all the tuneful race,

Smit by afflictive noon, disordered droop

Deep in the thicket, or, from bower to bower

Responsive, force an interrupted strain.

The stock-dove only through the forest coos,

Mournfully hoarse; oft ceasing from his plaint,

Short interval of weary woe! again

The sad idea of his murdered mate,

Struck from his side by savage fowler's guile,

Across his fancy comes; and then resounds

A louder song of sorrow through the grove.

Beside the dewy border let me sit,

All in the freshness of the humid air,

There on that hollowed rock, grotesque and wild,

An ample chair moss-lined, and over head

By flowering umbrage shaded; where the bee

Strays diligent, and with the extracted balm

Of fragrant woodbine loads his little thigh.

Now, while I taste the sweetness of the shade,

While Nature lies around deep-lulled in noon,

Now come, bold fancy, spread a daring flight

And view the wonders of the torrid zone:

Climes unrelenting! with whose rage compared,

Yon blaze is feeble and yon skies are cool.

See how at once the bright effulgent sun,

Rising direct, swift chases from the sky

The short-lived twilight, and with ardent blaze

Looks gaily fierce o'er all the dazzling air!

He mounts his throne; but kind before him sends,

Issuing from out the portals of the morn,

The general breeze1 to mitigate his fire

And breathe refreshment on a fainting world.

Great are the scenes, with dreadful beauty crowned

And barbarous wealth, that see, each circling year,

Returning suns and double seasons2 pass;

Rocks rich in gems, and mountains big with mines,

That on the high equator ridgy rise,

Whence many a bursting stream auriferous plays;

Majestic woods of every vigorous green,

Stage above stage high waving o'er the hills,

Or to the far horizon wide-diffused,

A boundless deep immensity of shade.

Here lofty trees, to ancient song unknown,

The noble sons of potent heat and floods

Prone-rushing from the clouds, rear high to heaven

Their thorny stems, and broad around them throw

Meridian gloom. Here, in eternal prime,

Unnumbered fruits of keen delicious taste

And vital spirit drink, amid the cliffs

And burning sands that bank the shrubby vales,

Redoubled day, yet in their rugged coats

A friendly juice to cool its rage contain.

Bear me, Pomona! to thy citron groves;

To where the lemon and the piercing lime,

With the deep orange glowing through the green,

Their lighter glories blend. Lay me reclined

Beneath the spreading tamarind, that shakes,

Fanned by the breeze, its fever-cooling fruit.

Deep in the night the massy locust sheds

Quench my hot limbs; or lead me through the maze,

Embowering endless, of the Indian fig;

Or, thrown at gayer ease on some fair brow,

Let me behold, by breezy murmurs cooled,

Broad o'er my head the verdant cedar wave,

And high palmettos lift their graceful shade.

Oh, stretched amid these orchards of the sun,

Give me to drain the cocoa's milky bowl,

And from the palm to draw its freshening wine!

More bounteous far than all the frantic juice

Which Bacchus pours. Nor, on its slender twigs

Low-bending, be the full pomegranate scorned;

Nor, creeping through the woods, the gelid race

Of berries. Oft in humble station dwells

Unboastful worth, above fastidious pomp.

Witness, thou best Anana, thou the pride

Of vegetable life, beyond whate'er

The poets imaged in the golden age:

Quick let me strip thee of thy tufty coat,

Spread thy ambrosial stores, and feast with Jove!

From these the prospect varies. Plains immense

Lie stretched below, interminable meads

And vast savannas, where the wandering eye,

Unfixt, is in a verdant ocean lost.

Another Flora there, of bolder hues

And richer sweets beyond our garden's pride,

Plays o'er the fields, and showers with sudden hand

Exuberant spring – for oft these valleys shift

Their green-embroidered robe to fiery brown,

And swift to green again, as scorching suns

Or streaming dews and torrent rains prevail.

Along these lonely regions, where, retired

From little scenes of art, great Nature dwells

In awful solitude, and naught is seen

But the wild herds that own no master's stall,

Prodigious rivers roll their fattening seas;

On whose luxuriant herbage, half-concealed,

Like a fallen cedar, far diffused his train,

Cased in green scales, the crocodile extends.

The flood disparts: behold! in plaited mail

Behemoth3 rears his head. Glanced from his side,

The darted steel in idle shivers flies:

He fearless walks the plain, or seeks the hills,

Where, as he crops his varied fare, the herds,

In widening circle round, forget their food

And at the harmless stranger wondering gaze.

Peaceful beneath primeval trees that cast

Their ample shade o'er Niger's yellow stream,

And where the Ganges rolls his sacred wave,

Or mid the central depth of blackening woods,

High-raised in solemn theatre around,

Leans the huge elephant – wisest of brutes!

Oh, truly wise! with gentle might endowed,

Though powerful not destructive! Here he sees

Revolving ages sweep the changeful earth,

And empires rise and fall; regardless he

Of what the never-resting race of men

Project: thrice happy, could he 'scape their guile

Who mine, from cruel avarice, his steps,

Or with his towery grandeur swell their state,

The pride of kings! or else his strength pervert,

And bid him rage amid the mortal fray,

Astonished at the madness of mankind.

Wide o'er the winding umbrage of the floods,

Like vivid blossoms glowing from afar,

Thick-swarm the brighter birds. For nature's hand,

That with a sportive vanity has decked

The plumy nations, there her gayest hues

Profusely pours. But, if she bids them shine4

Arrayed in all the beauteous beams of day,

Yet, frugal still, she humbles them in song.

Nor envy we the gaudy robes they lent

Proud Montezuma's realm, whose legions cast

A boundless radiance waving on the sun,

While Philomel is ours, while in our shades,

Through the soft silence of the listening night,

The sober-suited songstress trills her lay.

But come, my muse, the desert-barrier burst,

A wild expanse of lifeless sand and sky;

And, swifter than the toiling caravan,

Shoot o'er the vale of Sennar; ardent climb

The Nubian mountains, and the secret bounds

Of jealous Abyssinia boldly pierce.

Thou art no ruffian, who beneath the mask

Of social commerce com'st to rob their wealth;

No holy fury thou, blaspheming Heaven,

With consecrated steel to stab their peace,

And through the land, yet red from civil wounds,

To spread the purple tyranny of Rome.

Thou, like the harmless bee, mayst freely range

From mead to mead bright with exalted flowers,

From jasmine grove to grove; may'st wander gay

Through palmy shades and aromatic woods

That grace the plains, invest the peopled hills,

And up the more than Alpine mountains wave.

There on the breezy summit, spreading fair

For many a league, or on stupendous rocks,

That from the sun-redoubling valley lift,

Cool to the middle air, their lawny tops,

Where palaces and fanes and villas rise,

And gardens smile around and cultured fields,

And fountains gush, and careless herds and flocks

Securely stray – a world within itself,

Disdaining all assault: there let me draw

Ethereal soul, there drink reviving gales

Profusely breathing from the spicy groves

And vales of fragrance, there at distance hear

The roaring floods and cataracts that sweep

From disembowelled earth the virgin gold,

And o'er the varied landscape restless rove,

Fervent with life of every fairer kind.

A land of wonders! which the sun still eyes

With ray direct, as of the lovely realm

Enamoured, and delighting there to dwell.

How changed the scene! In blazing height of noon,

The sun, oppressed, is plunged in thickest gloom.

Still horror reigns, a dreary twilight round,

Of struggling night and day malignant mixed.

For to the hot equator crowding fast,

Where, highly rarefied, the yielding air

Admits their stream, incessant vapours roll,

Amazing clouds on clouds continual heaped;

Or whirled tempestuous by the gusty wind,

Or silent borne along, heavy and slow,

With the big stores of steaming oceans charged.

Meantime, amid these upper seas, condensed

Around the cold aerial mountain's brow,

And by conflicting winds together dashed,

The Thunder holds his black tremendous throne;

From cloud to cloud the rending Lightnings rage;

Till, in the furious elemental war

Dissolved, the whole precipitated mass

Unbroken floods and solid torrents pours.

The treasures these, hid from the bounded search

Of ancient knowledge, whence with annual pomp,

Rich king of floods! o'erflows the swelling Nile.

From his two springs in Gojam's sunny realm

Pure-welling out, he through the lucid lake

Of fair Dambea rolls his infant stream.

There, by the Naiads nursed, he sports away

His playful youth amid the fragrant isles

That with unfading verdure smile around.

Ambitious thence the manly river breaks,

And, gathering many a flood, and copious fed

With all the mellowed treasures of the sky,

Winds in progressive majesty along:

Through splendid kingdoms now devolves his maze,

Now wanders wild o'er solitary tracts

Of life-deserted sand; till, glad to quit

The joyless desert, down the Nubian rocks

From thundering steep to steep he pours his urn,

And Egypt joys beneath the spreading wave.

His brother Niger too, and all the floods

In which the full-formed maids of Afric lave

Their jetty limbs, and all that from the tract

Of woody mountains stretched thro' gorgeous Ind

Fall on Cormandel's coast or Malabar;

From Menam's orient stream5 that nightly shines

With insect-lamps, to where Aurora sheds

On Indus' smiling banks the rosy shower –

All, at this bounteous season, ope their urns

And pour untoiling harvest o'er the land.

Nor less thy world, Columbus, drinks refreshed

The lavish moisture of the melting year.

Wide o'er his isles the branching Oronoque

Rolls a brown deluge, and the native drives

To dwell aloft on life-sufficing trees –

At once his dome, his robe, his food, and arms.

Swelled by a thousand streams, impetuous hurled

From all the roaring Andes, huge descends

The mighty Orellana.6 Scarce the muse

Dares stretch her wing o'er this enormous mass

Of rushing water; scarce she dares attempt

The sea-like Plata, to whose dread expanse,

Continuous depth, and wondrous length of course

Our floods are rills. With unabated force

In silent dignity they sweep along,

And traverse realms unknown, and blooming wilds,

And fruitful deserts – worlds of solitude

Where the sun smiles and seasons teem in vain,

Unseen and unenjoyed. Forsaking these,

O'er peopled plains they fair-diffusive flow

And many a nation feed, and circle safe

In their soft bosom many a happy isle,

The seat of blameless Pan, yet undisturbed

By Christian crimes and Europe's cruel sons.

Thus pouring on they proudly seek the deep,

Whose vanquish'd tide, recoiling from the shock,

Yields to this liquid weight of half the globe;

And Ocean trembles for his green domain.

But what avails this wondrous waste of wealth,

This gay profusion of luxurious bliss,

This pomp of Nature? what their balmy meads,

Their powerful herbs, and Ceres void of pain?

By vagrant birds dispersed and wafting winds,

What their unplanted fruits? what the cool draughts,

The ambrosial food, rich gums, and spicy health

Their forests yield? their toiling insects what,

Their silky pride and vegetable robes?

Ah! what avail their fatal treasures, hid

Deep in the bowels of the pitying earth,

Golconda's gems, and sad Potosi's mines

Where dwelt the gentlest children of the Sun?

What all that Afric's golden rivers roll,

Her odorous woods, and shining ivory stores?

Ill-fated race! the softening arts of peace,

Whate'er the humanizing muses teach,

The godlike wisdom of the tempered breast,

Progressive truth, the patient force of thought,

Investigation calm whose silent powers

Command the world, the light that leads to Heaven,

Kind equal rule, the government of laws,

And all-protecting freedom which alone

Sustains the name and dignity of man –

These are not theirs. The parent sun himself

Seems o'er this world of slaves to tyrannize,

And, with oppressive ray the roseate bloom

Of beauty blasting, gives the gloomy hue

And feature gross – or, worse, to ruthless deeds.

Mad jealousy, blind rage, and fell revenge

Their fervid spirit fires. Love dwells not there,

The soft regards, the tenderness of life,

The heart-shed tear, the ineffable delight

Of sweet humanity: these court the beam

Of milder climes – in selfish fierce desire

And the wild fury of voluptuous sense

There lost. The very brute creation there

This rage partakes, and burns with horrid fire.

Lo! the green serpent, from his dark abode,

Which even imagination fears to tread,

At noon forth-issuing, gathers up his train

In orbs immense, then, darting out anew,

Seeks the refreshing fount, by which diffused

He throws his folds; and while, with threatening tongue

And deathful jaws erect, the monster curls

His flaming crest, all other thirst appalled

Or shivering flies, or checked at distance stands,

Nor dares approach. But still more direful he,

The small close-lurking minister of fate,

Whose high-concocted venom through the veins

A rapid lightning darts, arresting swift

The vital current. Formed to humble man,

This child of vengeful Nature! There, sublimed

To fearless lust of blood, the savage race

Roam, licensed by the shading hour of guilt

And foul misdeed, when the pure day has shut

His sacred eye. The tiger, darting fierce

Impetuous on the prey his glance has doomed;

The lively-shining leopard, speckled o'er

With many a spot, the beauty of the waste;

And, scorning all the taming arts of man,

The keen hyena, fellest of the fell –

These, rushing from the inhospitable woods

Of Mauritania, or the tufted isles

That verdant rise amid the Libyan wild,

Innumerous glare around their shaggy king

Majestic stalking o'er the printed sand;

And with imperious and repeated roars

Demand their fated food. The fearful flocks

Crowd near the guardian swain; the nobler herds,

Where round their lordly bull in rural ease

They ruminating lie, with horror hear

The coming rage. The awakened village starts;

And to her fluttering breast the mother strains

Her thoughtless infant. From the pirate's den,

Or stern Morocco's tyrant fang escaped,

The wretch half wishes for his bonds again;

While, uproar all, the wilderness resounds

From Atlas eastward to the frighted Nile.

Unhappy he! who, from the first of joys,

Society, cut off, is left alone

Amid this world of death! Day after day,

Sad on the jutting eminence he sits,

And views the main that ever toils below;

Still fondly forming in the farthest verge,

Where the round ether mixes with the wave,

Ships, dim-discovered, dropping from the clouds;

At evening, to the setting sun he turns

A mournful eye, and down his dying heart

Sinks helpless; while the wonted roar is up,

And hiss continual through the tedious night.

Yet here, even here, into these black abodes

Of monsters, unappalled, from stooping Rome

And guilty Caesar, Liberty retired,

Her Cato following through Numidian wilds –

Disdainful of Campania's gentle plains

And all the green delights Ausonia pours,

When for them she must bend the servile knee,

And, fawning, take the splendid robber's boon.

Nor stop the terrors of these regions here.

Commissioned demons oft, angels of wrath,

Let loose the raging elements. Breathed hot

From all the boundless furnace of the sky,

And the wide glittering waste of burning sand,

A suffocating wind the pilgrim smites

With instant death. Patient of thirst and toil,

Son of the desert! even the camel feels,

Shot through his withered heart, the fiery blast.

Or from the black-red ether, bursting broad,

Sallies the sudden whirlwind. Straight the sands,

Commoved around, in gathering eddies play;

Nearer and nearer still they darkening come;

Till, with the general all-involving storm

Swept up, the whole continuous wilds arise;

And by their noon-day fount dejected thrown,

Or sunk at night in sad disastrous sleep,

Beneath descending hills the caravan

Is buried deep. In Cairo's crowded streets

The impatient merchant, wondering, waits in vain,

And Mecca saddens at the long delay.

But chief at sea, whose every flexile wave

Obeys the blast, the aerial tumult swells.

In the dread ocean, undulating wide,

Beneath the radiant line that girts the globe,

The circling typhon,7 whirled from point to point,

Exhausting all the rage of all the sky,

And dire ecnephia reign. Amid the heavens,

Falsely serene, deep in a cloudy speck8

Compressed, the mighty tempest brooding dwells.

Of no regard, save to the skilful eye,

Fiery and foul, the small prognostic hangs

Aloft, or on the promontory's brow

Musters its force.