Thou smiling Nature's universal robe! United light and shade! where the sight With growing strength, and ever-new delight.' FROM the moist meadow to the withered hill, Led by the breeze, the vivid verdure runs, And swells, and deepens, to the cherish'd eye. The hawthorn whitens; and the juicy gro Put forth their buds, unfolding by degrees, In all the colours of the flushing year, fruit Lies yet a little embryo, unperceiv'd, Within its crimson folds. 100 Now from the town, Buried in smoke, and sleep, and noisome damps, Oft let me wander o'er the dewy fields, Where freshness breathes, and dash the trem bling "drops From the bent bush, as thro' the verdant Of sweet-briar hedges I pursue my walk; Of mingled blossoms; where the raptur'd eye Hurries from joy to joy, and, hid beneath The fair profusion, yellow Autumn spies. The clammy mildew; or, dry-blowing, breathe Untimely frost; before whose baseful blast. The full-blown spring thro' all her foliage shrinks, 120 Joyless and dead, a wide-dejected waste. eat, Thro' buds and bark, into the blackened core, Their cager way. A feeble race! yet oft The sacred sons of vengeance! on whose course 125 Corrosive famine waits, and kills the year, To check this plague the skilful farmer chaff, And blazing straw, before his orchard burns; Till, all involv'd in smoke, the latent foe From every cranny suffocated falls: Or scatters o'er the blooms the pungent -dust Of pepper, fatal to the frosty tribe: BE patients swains; these cruel-seeming winds Blow not in vain. Far hence they keep, re press'd Those deepening clouds on clouds, surcharg'd with rain, That oer the vast Atlantic hither borne, 140 In endless train: would quench the summerblaze, And, chearless, drown the crude unripened year. THE north-east spends his rage; he now Within his iron cave, Warms the wide air, shut up th' effusive south 145 Breathes the big clouds with vernal showers distent. At first a dusky wreath they seem to rise, breeze sinks the 155 Into a perfect calm; that not a breath oil, To throw the lucid moisture trickling off; And wait th' approaching sign to strike, at once, Into the general choir. Even mountains, vales, And forests seem, impatient, to demand walks 170 Amid the glad creation, musing praise, 180 In universal bounty, shedding herbs, Swift fancy fir'd anticipates their growth; THUS all day long the full-distended clouds Indulge their genial stores, and well-shower'd earth Is deep enrich'd with vegetable lifes |