A HYMN.

THESE, as they change, Almighty Father, these,
Are but the varied God. The rolling year
Is full of thee. Forth in the pleasing Spring
Thy beauty walks, thy tenderness and love.
Wide flush the fields; the soft'ning air is balm;
Echo the mountains round; the forest smiles;
And ev'ry sense, and ev'ry heart is joy.

Then comes thy glory in the Summer months,
With light and heat refulgent. Then thy sun
Shoots full perfection through the swelling year:
And oft thy voice in dreadful thunder speaks;
And oft at dawn, deep noon, or falling eve,
By brooks and groves, in hollow-whisp'ring gales.
Thy bounty shines in Autumn unconfin'd,
And spreads a common feast for all that lives.

S

In Winter awful thou! with clouds and storms
Around thee thrown, tempest o'er tempest roll'd,
Majestic darkness! on the whirlwind's wing,
Riding sublime, thou bidst the world adore,
And humblest nature with thy northern blast.
Mysterious round! what skill, what force divine,
Deep felt, in these appear! a simple train,
Yet so delightful mix'd, with such kind art,
Such beauty and beneficence combin'd;
Shade, unperceiv'd, so soft'ning into shade;
And all so forming an harmonious whole;
That, as they still succeed, they ravish still.
But wand'ring oft, with brute unconscious gaze,
Man marks not thee, marks not the mighty hand,
That, ever-busy, wheels the silent spheres;
Works in the secret deep; shoots, steaming, thence
The fair profusion that o'erspreads the Spring:
Flings from the sun direct the flaming day;
Feeds ev'ry creature; hurls the tempest forth;
And, as on earth this grateful change revolves,
With transport touches all the springs of life.

Nature, attend! join ev'ry living soul,
Beneath the spacious temple of the sky,

In adoration join; and, ardent, raise

One gen'ral song! To him, ye vocal gales,
Breathe soft, whose spirit in your freshness breathes;
O talk of him in solitary glooms!

Where, o'er the rock, the scarcely waving pine
Fills the brown shade with a religious awe.
And ye, whose bolder note is heard afar,
Who shake th'astonish'd world, lift high to heav'n
Th' impetuous song, and say from whom you rage.
His praise, ye brooks, attune, ye trembling rills;
And let me catch it as I muse along.

Ye headlong torrents, rapid, and profound;
Ye softer floods, that lead the humid maze
Along the vale; and thou, majestic main,
A secret world of wonders in thyself,
Sound his stupendous praise; whose greater voice
Or bids you roar, or bids your roarings fall.
Soft roll your incense, herbs, and fruits, and flow'rs,
In mingled clouds to him; whose sun exalts,
Whose breath perfumes you, and whose pencil
paints.

Ye forests bend, ye harvests wave, to him;
Breathe your still song into the reaper's heart,