The Seasons Read Online

Now from the world,

Sacred to sweet retirement, lovers steal,

And pour their souls in transport, which the sire

Of love approving hears, and calls it good.

Which way, Amanda, shall we bend our course?

The choice perplexes. Wherefore should we choose?

All is the same with thee. Say, shall we wind

Along the streams? or walk the smiling mead?

Or court the forest glades? or wander wild

Among the waving harvests? or ascend,

While radiant Summer opens all its pride,

Thy hill, delightful Shene?13 Here let us sweep

The boundless landscape; now the raptured eye,

Exulting swift, to huge Augusta send,

Now to the sister hills14 that skirt her plain,

To lofty Harrow now, and now to where

Majestic Windsor lifts his princely brow.

In lovely contrast to this glorious view,

Calmly magnificent, then will we turn

To where the silver Thames first rural grows.

There let the feasted eye unwearied stray;

Luxurious, there, rove through the pendent woods

That nodding hang o'er Harrington's retreat;

And, stooping thence to Ham's embowering walks,

Beneath whose shades, in spotless peace retired,

With her the pleasing partner of his heart,

The worthy Queensberry yet laments his Gay,

And polished Cornbury woos the willing muse,

Slow let us trace the matchless vale of Thames;

Fair-winding up to where the muses haunt

In Twit'nam's bowers, and for their Pope implore

The healing god; to royal Hampton's pile,

To Clermont's terraced height, and Esher's groves,

Where in the sweetest solitude, embraced

By the soft windings of the silent Mole,

From courts and senates Pelham finds repose.

Enchanting vale! beyond whate'er the muse

Has of Achaia or Hesperia sung!

O vale of bliss! O softly-swelling hills!

On which the power of cultivation lies,

And joys to see the wonders of his toil.

Heavens! what a goodly prospect spreads around,

Of hills, and dales, and woods, and lawns, and spires,

And glittering towns, and gilded streams, till all

The stretching landskip into smoke decays!

Happy Britannia! where the Queen of Arts,

Inspiring vigour, Liberty, abroad

Walks unconfined even to thy farthest cots,

And scatters plenty with unsparing hand.

Rich is thy soil, and merciful thy clime;

Thy streams unfailing in the Summer's drought;

Unmatched thy guardian-oaks; thy valleys float

With golden waves; and on thy mountains flocks

Bleat numberless; while, roving round their sides,

Bellow the blackening herds in lusty droves.

Beneath, thy meadows glow, and rise unquelled

Against the mower's scythe. On every hand

Thy villas shine. Thy country teems with wealth;

And Property assures it to the swain,

Pleased and unwearied in his guarded toil.

Full are thy cities with the sons of art;

And trade and joy, in every busy street,

Mingling are heard: even Drudgery himself,

As at the car he sweats, or, dusty, hews

The palace stone, looks gay. Thy crowded ports,

Where rising masts an endless prospect yield,

With labour burn, and echo to the shouts

Of hurried sailor, as he hearty waves

His last adieu, and, loosening every sheet,

Resigns the spreading vessel to the wind.

Bold, firm, and graceful, are thy generous youth,

By hardship sinewed, and by danger fired,

Scattering the nations where they go; and first

Or in the listed plain or stormy seas.

Mild are thy glories too, as o'er the plans

Of thriving peace thy thoughtful sires preside –

In genius and substantial learning, high;

For every virtue, every worth, renowned;

Sincere, plain-hearted, hospitable, kind,

Yet like the mustering thunder when provoked,

The dread of tyrants, and the sole resource

Of those that under grim oppression groan.

Thy sons of glory many! Alfred thine,

In whom the splendour of heroic war,

And more heroic peace, when governed well,

Combine; whose hallowed name the Virtues saint,

And his own muses love; the best of kings!

With him thy Edwards and thy Henrys shine,

Names dear to fame; the first who deep impressed

On haughty Gaul the terror of thy arms,

That awes her genius still. In statesmen thou,

And patriots, fertile. Thine a steady More,

Who, with a generous though mistaken zeal,

Withstood a brutal tyrant's useful rage;

Like Cato firm, like Aristides just,

Like rigid Cincinnatus nobly poor –

A dauntless soul erect, who smil'd on death.

Frugal and wise, a Walsingham is thine;

A Drake, who made thee mistress of the deep,

And bore thy name in thunder round the world.

Then flamed thy spirit high. But who can speak

The numerous worthies of the maiden reign?

In Raleigh mark their every glory mixed –

Raleigh, the scourge of Spain! whose breast with all

The sage, the patriot, and the hero burned.

Nor sunk his vigour when a coward reign

The warrior fettered, and at last resigned,

To glut the vengeance of a vanquished foe.

Then, active still and unrestrained, his mind

Explored the vast extent of ages past,

And with his prison-hours enriched the world;

Yet found no times, in all the long research,

So glorious, or so base, as those he proved,

In which he conquered, and in which he bled.

Nor can the muse the gallant Sidney pass,

The plume of war! with early laurels crowned,

The lover's myrtle and the poet's bay.

A Hampden too is thine, illustrious land!

Wise, strenuous, firm, of unsubmitting soul,

Who stemmed the torrent of a downward age

To slavery prone, and bade thee rise again,

In all thy native pomp of freedom bold.

Bright at his call thy age of men effulged;

Of men on whom late time a kindling eye

Shall turn, and tyrants tremble while they read.

Bring every sweetest flower, and let me strew

The grave where Russel lies, whose tempered blood,

With calmest cheerfulness for thee resigned,

Stained the sad annals of a giddy reign

Aiming at lawless power, though meanly sunk

In loose inglorious luxury. With him

His friend, the British Cassius,15 fearless bled;

Of high determined spirit, roughly brave,

By ancient learning to the enlighten'd love

Of ancient freedom warmed. Fair thy renown

In awful sages and in noble bards;

Soon as the light of dawning Science spread

Her orient ray, and waked the Muses' song.

Thine is a Bacon, hapless in his choice,

Unfit to stand the civil storm of state,

And, through the smooth barbarity of courts,

With firm but pliant virtue forward still

To urge his course: him for the studious shade

Kind Nature formed, deep, comprehensive, clear,

Exact, and elegant; in one rich soul,

Plato, the Stagyrite, and Tully joined.

The great deliverer he, who, from the gloom

Of cloistered monks and jargon-teaching schools,

Led forth the true philosophy, there long

Held in the magic chain of words and forms

And definitions void: he led her forth,

Daughter of Heaven! that, slow-ascending still,

Investigating sure the chain of things,

With radiant finger points to Heaven again.

The generous Ashley thine, the friend of man,16

Who scanned his nature with a brother's eye,

His weakness prompt to shade, to raise his aim,

To touch the finer movements of the mind,

And with the moral beauty charm the heart.

Why need I name thy Boyle, whose pious search,

Amid the dark recesses of his works,

The great Creator sought? And why thy Locke,

Who made the whole internal world his own?

Let Newton, pure intelligence, whom God

To mortals lent to trace his boundless works17

From laws sublimely simple, speak thy fame

In all philosophy. For lofty sense,

Creative fancy, and inspection keen

Through the deep windings of the human heart,

Is not wild Shakespeare thine and nature's boast?

Is not each great, each amiable muse

Of classic ages in thy Milton met?

A genius universal as his theme,

Astonishing as chaos, as the bloom

Of blowing Eden fair, as heaven sublime!

Nor shall my verse that elder bard forget,

The gentle Spenser, fancy's pleasing son;

Who, like a copious river, poured his song

O'er all the mazes of enchanted ground:

Nor thee, his ancient master, laughing sage,

Chaucer, whose native manners-painting verse,

Well moralized, shines through the Gothic cloud

Of time and language o'er thy genius thrown.

May my song soften as thy daughters I,

Britannia, hail! for beauty is their own,

The feeling heart, simplicity of life,

And elegance, and taste; the faultless form,

Shaped by the hand of harmony; the cheek,

Where the live crimson, through the native white

Soft-shooting, o'er the face diffuses bloom

And every nameless grace; the parted lip,

Like the red rosebud moist with morning dew,

Breathing delight; and, under flowing jet,

Or sunny ringlets, or of circling brown,

The neck slight-shaded and the swelling breast;

The look resistless, piercing to the soul,

And by the soul informed, when, dressed in love,

She sits high-smiling in the conscious eye.

Island of bliss! amid the subject seas

That thunder round thy rocky coasts, set up,

At once the wonder, terror, and delight,

Of distant nations, whose remotest shore

Can soon be shaken by thy naval arm;

Not to be shook thyself, but all assaults

Baffling, like thy hoar cliffs the loud sea-wave.

O Thou, by whose almighty nod the scale

Of empire rises, or alternate falls,

Send forth the saving Virtues round the land

In bright patrol – white Peace, and social Love;

The tender-looking Charity, intent

On gentle deeds, and shedding tears through smiles;

Undaunted Truth, and Dignity of mind;

Courage, composed and keen; sound Temperance,

Healthful in heart and look; clear Chastity,

With blushes reddening as she moves along,

Disordered at the deep regard she draws;

Rough Industry; Activity untired,

With copious life informed, and all awake:

While in the radiant front superior shines

That first paternal virtue, Public Zeal,

Who throws o'er all an equal, wide survey,

And, ever musing on the common weal,

Still labours glorious with some great design.

Low walks the sun, and broadens by degrees,

Just o'er the verge of day. The shifting clouds

Assembled gay, a richly-gorgeous train,

In all their pomp attend his setting throne.

Air, earth, and ocean smile immense. And now,

As if his weary chariot sought the bowers

Of Amphitritè and her tending nymphs,

(So Grecian fable sung) he dips his orb;

Now half-immersed; and now, a golden curve,

Gives one bright glance, then total disappears.

For ever running an enchanted round,

Passes the day, deceitful, vain, and void;

As fleets the vision o'er the formful brain,

This moment hurrying wild the impassioned soul,

The next in nothing lost. 'Tis so to him,

The dreamer of this earth, an idle blank –

A sight of horror to the cruel wretch,

Who, all day long in sordid pleasure rolled,

Himself an useless load, has squandered vile

Upon his scoundrel train what might have cheered

A drooping family of modest worth.

But to the generous, still-improving mind

That gives the hopeless heart to sing for joy,

Diffusing kind beneficence around

Boastless as now descends the silent dew –

To him the long review of ordered life

Is inward rapture only to be felt.

Confessed from yonder slow-extinguished clouds,

All ether softening, sober Evening takes

Her wonted station in the middle air,

A thousand shadows at her beck. First this

She sends on earth; then that of deeper dye

Steals soft behind; and then a deeper still,

In circle following circle, gathers round

To close the face of things. A fresher gale

Begins to wave the wood and stir the stream,

Sweeping with shadowy gust the fields of corn,

While the quail clamours for his running mate.

Wide o'er the thistly lawn, as swells the breeze,

A whitening shower of vegetable down

Amusive floats. The kind impartial care

Of Nature naught disdains: thoughtful to feed

Her lowest sons, and clothe the coming year,

From field to field the feathered seeds she wings.

His folded flock secure, the shepherd home

Hies, merry-hearted; and by turns relieves

The ruddy milk-maid of her brimming pail –

The beauty whom perhaps his witless heart,

Unknowing what the joy-mixed anguish means,

Sincerely loves, by that best language shown

Of cordial glances and obliging deeds.

Onward they pass, o'er many a panting height

And valley sunk and unfrequented; where

At fall of eve the fairy people throng,

In various game and revelry to pass

The summer night, as village stories tell.

But far about they wander from the grave

Of him whom his ungentle fortune urged

Against his own sad breast to lift the hand

Of impious violence. The lonely tower

Is also shunned; whose mournful chambers hold,

So night-struck fancy dreams, the yelling ghost.

Among the crooked lanes, on every hedge,

The Glow-worm lights his gem; and, through the dark,

A moving radiance twinkles. Evening yields

The world to Night; not in her winter robe

Of massy Stygian woof, but loose arrayed

In mantle dun. A faint erroneous ray,

Glanced from the imperfect surfaces of things,

Flings half an image on the straining eye;

While wavering woods, and villages, and streams,

And rocks, and mountain-tops that long retained

The ascending gleam are all one swimming scene,

Uncertain if beheld. Sudden to heaven

Thence weary vision turns; where, leading soft

The silent hours of love, with purest ray

Sweet Venus shines; and, from her genial rise,

When daylight sickens, till it springs afresh,

Unrivalled reigns, the fairest lamp of night.

As thus the effulgence tremulous I drink,

With cherished gaze, the lambent lightnings shoot

Across the sky, or horizontal dart

In wondrous shapes – by fearful murmuring crowds

Portentous deemed. Amid the radiant orbs

That more than deck, that animate the sky,

The life-infusing suns of other worlds,

Lo! from the dread immensity of space

Returning with accelerated course,

The rushing comet to the sun descends;

And, as he sinks below the shading earth,

With awful train projected o'er the heavens,

The guilty nations tremble. But, above

Those superstitious horrors that enslave

The fond sequacious herd, to mystic faith

And blind amazement prone, the enlightened few,

Whose godlike minds philosophy exalts,

The glorious stranger hail. They feel a joy

Divinely great; they in their powers exult,

That wondrous force of thought, which mounting spurns

This dusky spot, and measures all the sky;

While, from his far excursions through the wilds

Of barren ether, faithful to his time,

They see the blazing wonder rise anew,

In seeming terror clad, but kindly bent

To work the will of all-sustaining love –

From his huge vapoury train perhaps to shake

Reviving moisture on the numerous orbs

Through which his long ellipsis winds, perhaps

To lend new fuel to declining suns,

To light up worlds, and feed the eternal fire.

With thee, serene Philosophy, with thee,

And thy bright garland, let me crown my song!

Effusive source of evidence and truth!

A lustre shedding o'er the ennobled mind,

Stronger than summer-noon, and pure as that

Whose mild vibrations soothe the parted soul,

New to the dawning of celestial day.

Hence through her nourished powers, enlarged by thee,

She springs aloft, with elevated pride,

Above the tangling mass of low desires,

That bind the fluttering crowd; and, angel-winged,

The heights of science and of virtue gains,

Where all is calm and clear; with Nature round,

Or in the starry regions or the abyss,

To reason's and to fancy's eye displayed –

The first up-tracing, from the dreary void,

The chain of causes and effects to Him,

The world-producing Essence, who alone

Possesses being; while the last receives

The whole magnificence of heaven and earth,

And every beauty, delicate or bold,

Obvious or more remote, with livelier sense,

Diffusive painted on the rapid mind.

Tutored by thee, hence Poetry exalts

Her voice to ages; and informs the page

With music, image, sentiment, and thought,

Never to die; the treasure of mankind,

Their highest honour, and their truest joy!

Without thee what were unenlightened man?

A savage, roaming through the woods and wilds

In quest of prey; and with the unfashioned fur

Rough-clad; devoid of every finer art

And elegance of life. Nor happiness

Domestic, mixed of tenderness and care,

Nor moral excellence, nor social bliss,

Nor guardian law were his; nor various skill

To turn the furrow, or to guide the tool

Mechanic; nor the heaven-conducted prow

Of Navigation bold, that fearless braves

The burning line or dares the wintry pole,

Mother severe of infinite delights!

Nothing, save rapine, indolence, and guile,

And woes on woes, a still-revolving train!

Whose horrid circle had made human life

Than non-existence worse: but, taught by thee,

Ours are the plans of policy and peace;

To live like brothers, and, conjunctive all,

Embellish life. While thus laborious crowds

Ply the tough oar, Philosophy directs

The ruling helm; or, like the liberal breath

Of potent heaven, invisible, the sail

Swells out, and bears the inferior world along.

Nor to this evanescent speck of earth

Poorly confined: the radiant tracts on high

Are her exalted range; intent to gaze

Creation through; and, from that full complex

Of never-ending wonders, to conceive

Of the Sole Being right, who spoke the word,

And Nature moved complete. With inward view,

Thence on the ideal kingdom swift she turns

Her eye; and instant, at her powerful glance,

The obedient phantoms vanish or appear;

Compound, divide, and into order shift,

Each to his rank, from plain perception up

To the fair forms of fancy's fleeting train;

To reason then, deducing truth from truth,

And notion quite abstract; where first begins

The world of spirits, action all, and life

Unfettered and unmixed. But here the cloud,

So wills Eternal Providence, sits deep.

Enough for us to know that this dark state,

In wayward passions lost and vain pursuits,

This infancy of being, cannot prove

The final issue of the works of God,

By boundless love and perfect wisdom formed,

And ever rising with the rising mind.

Autumn

The Argument

The subject proposed. Addressed to Mr.