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Evening and Night.

Wide o'er the thistly lawn, as swells the breeze,
A whitening shower of vegetable down
Amusive floats. The kind impartial care
Of Nature nought 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-mixt anguish means,
Sincerely loves, by that best language shewn
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,

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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

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Is also shunned; whose mournful chambers hold,
So night-struck Fancy dreams, the yelling ghost.
Among the crooked lanes, on every hedge,

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The glow worm lights his gem; and through the dark
A moving radiance twinkies. 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;

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Radiant Orbs of Night.

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 day-light sickens till it springs afresh,
Unrivalled reigns, the fairest lamp of night.
As thus the effulgence tremulous I drink,

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With cherished gaze, the lambent lightnings shoot
Across the sky; or horizontal dart

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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

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Those superstitious horrors that enslave
The fond sequacious herd, to mystic faith

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And blind amazement prone, the enlightened few,
Whose god-like 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 excursion through the wilds

Of barren ether, faithful to his time,

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Philosophy.

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 sooth the parted soul,
New to the dawning of celestial day.

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Hence thro' 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,

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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,

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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,

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Diffusive painted on the rapid mind.

Tutored by thee, hence Poetry exalts Her voice to apes; and informs the page.

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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 thro' the woods and wilds,
In quest of prey; and with th' 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,

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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

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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

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Than non-existence worse: but, taught by thee,
Ours are the plans of policy, and peace;

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Swells out, and bears the inferior world along.
Nor to this evanescent speck of earth

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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

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Of the SOLE BEING right, who "spoke the word,"

Moral Philosophy.

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 unmixt. 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!

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