The Task, and Other Poems Part 9

Acquaint thyself with G.o.d if thou wouldst taste His works. Admitted once to His embrace, Thou shalt perceive that thou wast blind before; Thine eye shall be instructed, and thine heart, Made pure, shall relish, with divine delight Till then unfelt, what hands divine have wrought.

Brutes graze the mountain-top with faces p.r.o.ne, And eyes intent upon the scanty herb It yields them; or, rec.u.mbent on its brow, Ruminate, heedless of the scene outspread Beneath, beyond, and stretching far away From inland regions to the distant main.

Man views it and admires, but rests content With what he views. The landscape has his praise, But not its Author. Unconcerned who formed The paradise he sees, he finds it such, And such well pleased to find it, asks no more.

Not so the mind that has been touched from heaven, And in the school of sacred wisdom taught To read His wonders, in whose thought the world, Fair as it is, existed ere it was.

Nor for its own sake merely, but for His Much more who fashioned it, he gives it praise; Praise that from earth resulting as it ought To earth's acknowledged Sovereign, finds at once Its only just proprietor in Him.

The soul that sees Him, or receives sublimed New faculties or learns at least to employ More worthily the powers she owned before; Discerns in all things what, with stupid gaze Of ignorance, till then she overlooked, A ray of heavenly light gilding all forms Terrestrial, in the vast and the minute The unambiguous footsteps of the G.o.d Who gives its l.u.s.tre to an insect's wing And wheels His throne upon the rolling worlds.

Much conversant with heaven, she often holds With those fair ministers of light to man That fill the skies nightly with silent pomp Sweet conference; inquires what strains were they With which heaven rang, when every star, in haste To gratulate the new-created earth, Sent forth a voice, and all the sons of G.o.d Shouted for joy.--"Tell me, ye shining hosts That navigate a sea that knows no storms, Beneath a vault unsullied with a cloud, If from your elevation, whence ye view Distinctly scenes invisible to man And systems of whose birth no tidings yet Have reached this nether world, ye spy a race Favoured as ours, transgressors from the womb And hasting to a grave, yet doomed to rise And to possess a brighter heaven than yours?

As one who, long detained on foreign sh.o.r.es, Pants to return, and when he sees afar His country's weather-bleached and battered rocks, From the green wave emerging, darts an eye Radiant with joy towards the happy land; So I with animated hopes behold, And many an aching wish, your beamy fires, That show like beacons in the blue abyss, Ordained to guide the embodied spirit home From toilsome life to never-ending rest.

Love kindles as I gaze. I feel desires That give a.s.surance of their own success, And that, infused from heaven, must thither tend."

So reads he Nature whom the lamp of truth Illuminates. Thy lamp, mysterious Word!

Which whoso sees, no longer wanders lost With intellect bemazed in endless doubt, But runs the road of wisdom. Thou hast built, With means that were not till by Thee employed, Worlds that had never been, hadst Thou in strength Been less, or less benevolent than strong.

They are Thy witnesses, who speak Thy power And goodness infinite, but speak in ears That hear not, or receive not their report.

In vain Thy creatures testify of Thee Till Thou proclaim Thyself. Theirs is indeed A teaching voice; but 'tis the praise of Thine That whom it teaches it makes prompt to learn, And with the boon gives talents for its use.

Till Thou art heard, imaginations vain Possess the heart, and fables, false as h.e.l.l, Yet deemed oracular, lure down to death The uninformed and heedless souls of men.

We give to chance, blind chance, ourselves as blind, The glory of Thy work, which yet appears Perfect and unimpeachable of blame, Challenging human scrutiny, and proved Then skilful most when most severely judged.

But chance is not; or is not where Thou reign'st: Thy providence forbids that fickle power (If power she be that works but to confound) To mix her wild vagaries with Thy laws.

Yet thus we dote, refusing, while we can, Instruction, and inventing to ourselves G.o.ds such as guilt makes welcome--G.o.ds that sleep, Or disregard our follies, or that sit Amused spectators of this bustling stage.

Thee we reject, unable to abide Thy purity, till pure as Thou art pure, Made such by Thee, we love Thee for that cause For which we shunned and hated Thee before.

Then we are free: then liberty, like day, Breaks on the soul, and by a flash from heaven Fires all the faculties with glorious joy.

A voice is heard that mortal ears hear not Till Thou hast touched them; 'tis the voice of song, A loud Hosanna sent from all Thy works, Which he that hears it with a shout repeats, And adds his rapture to the general praise.

In that blest moment, Nature, throwing wide Her veil opaque, discloses with a smile The Author of her beauties, who, retired Behind His own creation, works unseen By the impure, and hears His power denied.

Thou art the source and centre of all minds, Their only point of rest, eternal Word!

From Thee departing, they are lost and rove At random, without honour, hope, or peace.

From Thee is all that soothes the life of man, His high endeavour, and his glad success, His strength to suffer, and his will to serve.

But, oh, Thou Bounteous Giver of all good, Thou art of all Thy gifts Thyself the crown!

Give what Thou canst, without Thee we are poor, And with Thee rich, take what Thou wilt away.

BOOK VI.

THE WINTER WALK AT NOON.

There is in souls a sympathy with sounds, And as the mind is pitched the ear is pleased With melting airs or martial, brisk or grave; Some chord in unison with what we hear Is touched within us, and the heart replies.

How soft the music of those village bells Falling at intervals upon the ear In cadence sweet, now dying all away, Now pealing loud again, and louder still, Clear and sonorous as the gale comes on.

With easy force it opens all the cells Where memory slept. Wherever I have heard A kindred melody, the scene recurs, And with it all its pleasures and its pains.

Such comprehensive views the spirit takes, That in a few short moments I retrace (As in a map the voyager his course) The windings of my way through many years.

Short as in retrospect the journey seems, It seemed not always short; the rugged path, And prospect oft so dreary and forlorn, Moved many a sigh at its disheartening length.

Yet feeling present evils, while the past Faintly impress the mind, or not at all, How readily we wish time spent revoked, That we might try the ground again, where once (Through inexperience as we now perceive) We missed that happiness we might have found.

Some friend is gone, perhaps his son's best friend A father, whose authority, in show When most severe, and mustering all its force, Was but the graver countenance of love; Whose favour, like the clouds of spring, might lower, And utter now and then an awful voice, But had a blessing in its darkest frown, Threatening at once and nourishing the plant.

We loved, but not enough, the gentle hand That reared us. At a thoughtless age allured By every gilded folly, we renounced His sheltering side, and wilfully forewent That converse which we now in vain regret.

How gladly would the man recall to life The boy's neglected sire! a mother too, That softer friend, perhaps more gladly still, Might he demand them at the gates of death.

Sorrow has since they went subdued and tamed The playful humour; he could now endure (Himself grown sober in the vale of tears) And feel a parent's presence no restraint.

But not to understand a treasure's worth Till time has stolen away the slighted good, Is cause of half the poverty we feel, And makes the world the wilderness it is.

The few that pray at all, pray oft amiss, And, seeking grace to improve the prize they hold, Would urge a wiser suit than asking more.

The night was winter in his roughest mood, The morning sharp and clear; but now at noon Upon the southern side of the slant hills, And where the woods fence off the northern blast, The season smiles, resigning all its rage, And has the warmth of May. The vault is blue Without a cloud, and white without a speck The dazzling splendour of the scene below.

Again the harmony comes o'er the vale, And through the trees I view the embattled tower Whence all the music. I again perceive The soothing influence of the wafted strains, And settle in soft musings, as I tread The walk still verdant under oaks and elms, Whose outspread branches overarch the glade.

The roof, though movable through all its length, As the wind sways it, has yet well sufficed, And, intercepting in their silent fall The frequent flakes, has kept a path for me.

No noise is here, or none that hinders thought: The redbreast warbles still, but is content With slender notes and more than half suppressed.

Pleased with his solitude, and flitting light From spray to spray, where'er he rests he shakes From many a twig the pendant drops of ice, That tinkle in the withered leaves below.

Stillness, accompanied with sounds so soft, Charms more than silence. Meditation here May think down hours to moments. Here the heart May give an useful lesson to the head, And learning wiser grow without his books.

Knowledge and wisdom, far from being one, Have ofttimes no connection. Knowledge dwells In heads replete with thoughts of other men; Wisdom in minds attentive to their own.

Knowledge, a rude unprofitable ma.s.s, The mere materials with which wisdom builds, Till smoothed and squared and fitted to its place, Does but enc.u.mber whom it seems to enrich.

Knowledge is proud that he has learned so much, Wisdom is humble that he knows no more.

Books are not seldom talismans and spells By which the magic art of shrewder wits Holds an unthinking mult.i.tude enthralled.

Some to the fascination of a name Surrender judgment hoodwinked. Some the style Infatuates, and, through labyrinths and wilds Of error, leads them by a tune entranced.

While sloth seduces more, too weak to bear The insupportable fatigue of thought, And swallowing therefore without pause or choice The total grist unsifted, husks and all.

But trees, and rivulets whose rapid course Defies the check of winter, haunts of deer, And sheep-walks populous with bleating lambs, And lanes, in which the primrose ere her time Peeps through the moss that clothes the hawthorn root, Deceive no student. Wisdom there, and truth, Not shy as in the world, and to be won By slow solicitation, seize at once The roving thought, and fix it on themselves.

What prodigies can power divine perform More grand than it produces year by year, And all in sight of inattentive man?

Familiar with the effect we slight the cause, And in the constancy of Nature's course, The regular return of genial months, And renovation of a faded world, See nought to wonder at. Should G.o.d again, As once in Gibeon, interrupt the race Of the undeviating and punctual sun, How would the world admire! but speaks it less An agency divine, to make him know His moment when to sink and when to rise Age after age, than to arrest his course?

All we behold is miracle: but, seen So duly, all is miracle in vain.

Where now the vital energy that moved, While summer was, the pure and subtle lymph Through the imperceptible meandering veins Of leaf and flower? It sleeps: and the icy touch Of unprolific winter has impressed A cold stagnation on the intestine tide.

But let the months go round, a few short months, And all shall be restored. These naked shoots, Barren as lances, among which the wind Makes wintry music, sighing as it goes, Shall put their graceful foliage on again, And more aspiring and with ampler spread Shall boast new charms, and more than they have lost.

Then, each in its peculiar honours clad, Shall publish even to the distant eye Its family and tribe. Laburnum rich In streaming gold; syringa ivory pure; The scented and the scentless rose; this red And of a humbler growth, the other tall, And throwing up into the darkest gloom Of neighbouring cypress, or more sable yew, Her silver globes, light as the foamy surf That the wind severs from the broken wave; The lilac various in array, now white, Now sanguine, and her beauteous head now set With purple spikes pyramidal, as if Studious of ornament, yet unresolved Which hue she most approved, she chose them all; Copious of flowers the woodbine, pale and wan, But well compensating their sickly looks With never-cloying odours, early and late; Hyperic.u.m all bloom, so thick a swarm Of flowers like flies, clothing her slender rods, That scarce a leaf appears; mezereon too, Though leafless, well attired, and thick beset With blushing wreaths investing every spray; Althaea with the purple eye; the broom, Yellow and bright as bullion unalloyed Her blossoms; and luxuriant above all The jasmine, throwing wide her elegant sweets, The deep dark green of whose unvarnished leaf Makes more conspicuous, and illumines more The bright profusion of her scattered stars.-- These have been, and these shall be in their day, And all this uniform uncoloured scene Shall be dismantled of its fleecy load, And flush into variety again.

From dearth to plenty, and from death to life, Is Nature's progress when she lectures man In heavenly truth; evincing, as she makes The grand transition, that there lives and works A soul in all things, and that soul is G.o.d.

The beauties of the wilderness are His, That make so gay the solitary place Where no eye sees them. And the fairer forms That cultivation glories in, are His.

He sets the bright procession on its way, And marshals all the order of the year.

He marks the bounds which Winter may not pa.s.s, And blunts his pointed fury. In its case, Russet and rude, folds up the tender germ Uninjured, with inimitable art, And, ere one flowery season fades and dies, Designs the blooming wonders of the next.

Some say that in the origin of things, When all creation started into birth, The infant elements received a law From which they swerve not since; that under force Of that controlling ordinance they move, And need not His immediate hand, who first Prescribed their course, to regulate it now.

Thus dream they, and contrive to save a G.o.d The enc.u.mbrance of His own concerns, and spare The great Artificer of all that moves The stress of a continual act, the pain Of unremitted vigilance and care, As too laborious and severe a task.

So man the moth is not afraid, it seems, To span Omnipotence, and measure might That knows no measure, by the scanty rule And standard of his own, that is to-day, And is not ere to-morrow's sun go down.

But how should matter occupy a charge Dull as it is, and satisfy a law So vast in its demands, unless impelled To ceaseless service by a ceaseless force, And under pressure of some conscious cause?

The Lord of all, Himself through all diffused Sustains and is the life of all that lives.

Nature is but a name for an effect Whose cause is G.o.d. He feeds the secret fire By which the mighty process is maintained, Who sleeps not, is not weary; in whose sight Slow-circling ages are as transient days; Whose work is without labour, whose designs No flaw deforms, no difficulty thwarts, And whose beneficence no charge exhausts.

Him blind antiquity profaned, not served, With self-taught rites and under various names Female and male, Pomona, Pales, Pan, And Flora and Vertumnus; peopling earth With tutelary G.o.ddesses and G.o.ds That were not, and commending as they would To each some province, garden, field, or grove.

But all are under One. One spirit--His Who bore the platted thorns with bleeding brows-- Rules universal nature. Not a flower But shows some touch in freckle, streak, or stain, Of His unrivalled pencil. He inspires Their balmy odours and imparts their hues, And bathes their eyes with nectar, and includes, In grains as countless as the sea-side sands, The forms with which He sprinkles all the earth.

Happy who walks with Him! whom, what he finds Of flavour or of scent in fruit or flower, Or what he views of beautiful or grand In nature, from the broad majestic oak To the green blade that twinkles in the sun, Prompts with remembrance of a present G.o.d.

His presence, who made all so fair, perceived, Makes all still fairer. As with Him no scene Is dreary, so with Him all seasons please.

Though winter had been none had man been true, And earth be punished for its tenant's sake, Yet not in vengeance; as this smiling sky, So soon succeeding such an angry night, And these dissolving snows, and this clear stream, Recovering fast its liquid music, prove.

Who then, that has a mind well strung and tuned To contemplation, and within his reach A scene so friendly to his favourite task, Would waste attention at the chequered board, His host of wooden warriors to and fro Marching and counter-marching, with an eye As fixt as marble, with a forehead ridged And furrowed into storms, and with a hand Trembling, as if eternity were hung In balance on his conduct of a pin?

Nor envies he aught more their idle sport, Who pant with application misapplied To trivial toys, and, pushing ivory b.a.l.l.s Across the velvet level, feel a joy Akin to rapture, when the bauble finds Its destined goal of difficult access.

Nor deems he wiser him, who gives his noon To Miss, the Mercer's plague, from shop to shop Wandering, and littering with unfolded silks The polished counter, and approving none, Or promising with smiles to call again.

Nor him, who, by his vanity seduced, And soothed into a dream that he discerns The difference of a Guido from a daub, Frequents the crowded auction. Stationed there As duly as the Langford of the show, With gla.s.s at eye, and catalogue in hand, And tongue accomplished in the fulsome cant And pedantry that c.o.xcombs learn with ease, Oft as the price-deciding hammer falls He notes it in his book, then raps his box, Swears 'tis a bargain, rails at his hard fate That he has let it pa.s.s--but never bids.

Here unmolested, through whatever sign The sun proceeds, I wander; neither mist, Nor freezing sky, nor sultry, checking me, Nor stranger intermeddling with my joy.

Even in the spring and play-time of the year That calls the unwonted villager abroad With all her little ones, a sportive train, To gather king-cups in the yellow mead, And prank their hair with daisies, or to pick A cheap but wholesome salad from the brook, These shades are all my own. The timorous hare, Grown so familiar with her frequent guest, Scarce shuns me; and the stock-dove unalarmed Sits cooing in the pine-tree, nor suspends His long love-ditty for my near approach.

Drawn from his refuge in some lonely elm That age or injury has hollowed deep, Where on his bed of wool and matted leaves He has outslept the winter, ventures forth To frisk awhile, and bask in the warm sun, The squirrel, flippant, pert, and full of play.

He sees me, and at once, swift as a bird, Ascends the neighbouring beech; there whisks his brush, And perks his ears, and stamps and scolds aloud, With all the prettiness of feigned alarm, And anger insignificantly fierce.

The heart is hard in nature, and unfit For human fellowship, as being void Of sympathy, and therefore dead alike To love and friendship both, that is not pleased With sight of animals enjoying life, Nor feels their happiness augment his own.

The bounding fawn that darts across the glade When none pursues, through mere delight of heart, And spirits buoyant with excess of glee; The horse, as wanton and almost as fleet, That skims the s.p.a.cious meadow at full speed, Then stops and snorts, and throwing high his heels Starts to the voluntary race again; The very kine that gambol at high noon, The total herd receiving first from one, That leads the dance, a summons to be gay, Though wild their strange vagaries, and uncouth Their efforts, yet resolved with one consent To give such act and utterance as they may To ecstasy too big to be suppressed-- These, and a thousand images of bliss, With which kind nature graces every scene Where cruel man defeats not her design, Impart to the benevolent, who wish All that are capable of pleasure pleased, A far superior happiness to theirs, The comfort of a reasonable joy.

Man scarce had risen, obedient to His call Who formed him from the dust, his future grave, When he was crowned as never king was since.

G.o.d set His diadem upon his head, And angel choirs attended. Wondering stood The new-made monarch, while before him pa.s.sed, All happy and all perfect in their kind, The creatures, summoned from their various haunts To see their sovereign, and confess his sway.

Vast was his empire, absolute his power, Or bounded only by a law whose force 'Twas his sublimest privilege to feel And own, the law of universal love.