The rainbow cones and goes,
And lovely is the rose,

The moon doth with delight

Look round her when the heavens are bare;
Waters on a starry night

Are beautiful and fair;

The sunshine is a glorious birth;

But yet I know, where'er I

go,

That there hath pass'd away a glory from the earth.

Now, while the birds thus sing a joyous song,

And while the young

lambs bound,

As to the tabor's sound,

To me alone there came a thought of grief,
But timely utterance gave that thought relief,
And I again am strong.

The cataracts blow their trumpets from the steep,
No more shall grief of mine the season wrong;
I hear the echoes through the mountains throng,
The winds come to me from the fields of sleep,
And all the earth is gay,

Land and sea

Give themselves up to jollity,
And with the heart of May
Doth every beast cep holiday,
Thou Child of joy

Shout round me,

let me hear thy shouts, thou happy shepherd boy!

Ye blessed creatures, I have heard the call
Ye to each other make; I see
The heavens laugh with you in your jubilee ;
My heart is at your festival,

My head hath its coronal,

The fulness of your bliss, I feel-I feel it all.

Oh evil day! if I were sullen
While the Earth herself is adorning,
This sweet May morning,
And the children are pulling,

On every side,

In a thousand valleys far and wide, Fresh flowers; while the sun shines warm, And the Babe leaps up on his mother's arm :I hear, I hear, with joy I hear!

But there's a tree, of many one,

A single field which I have look'd upon,
Both of them speak of something that is gone.
The pansy at my feet

Doth the same tale repeat:

Whither is fled the visionary gleam?
Where is it now, the glory and the dream?

Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting:
The soul that rises with us, our life's star,
Hath had elsewhere its setting,

And cometh from afar:

Not in entire forgetfulness,

And not in utter nakedness,

But trailing clouds of glory do we come
From God, who is our home:
Heaven lies about us in our infancy!
Shades of the prison-house begin to close
Upon the growing Boy,

But he beholds the light, and whence it flows,
He sees it in his joy;

The Youth, who daily farther from the East
Must travel, still is Nature's Priest,
And by the vision splendid

Is on his way attended;

At length the Man perceives it die away,
And fade into the light of common day.

Earth fills her lap with pleasures of her own;
Yearnings she hath in her own natural kind,
And, even with something of a mother's mind,
And no unworthy aim,

The homely nurse doth all she can
To make her foster-child, her inmate man,
Forget the glories he hath known,

And that imperial palace whence he came.

Behold the Child among his new-born blisses,
A four years' darling of a pigmy size!
See, where 'mid work of his own hand he lies,
Fretted by sallies of his mother's kisses,
With light upon him from his father's eyes!
See, at his feet some little plan or chart,
Some fragment from his dream of human life,
Shap'd by himself with newly-learned art;
A wedding or a festival,

A mourning or a funeral;

And this hath now his heart,
And unto this he frames his song:
Then will he fit his tongue

To dialogues of business, love, or strife;

But it will not be long

Ere this be thrown aside,

And with new joy and pride,

The little actor cons another part,

Filling from time to time his humorous stage'
With all the persons, down to palsied age,
That Life brings with her in her equipage;
As if his whole vocation
Were endless imitation.

Thou, whose exterior semblance doth belie
Thy soul's immensity;

Thou best Philosopher, who yet dost keep
Thy heritage, thou Eye among the blind,

If wealth increase our pleasures, does it not Increase our wishes also, and our cares? And surely that must be the happiest lot, Which has the fewest wants. The hardiest tares Grow in the richest soil, and p'easure bears Honey and wormwood on the self-same stem. Go, man of wealth and power, and see how fares Guilt's soul-stung victim! To dispe. hy phlegm, Hie where woe's sufferers writhe, and learn for once from them.

Go where the madman woos thee to perpend The deep intensity of mortal careWhere not one ray of happiness can blend With the benighting horrors of despairGo, and receive an awful lesson there! There what a check to tame the swell of pride; Man's form is here, but Heaven's bright image where? No gleam of sunshine flashes through the void Of banish'd intellect-now maddened and destroyed.

Eternal God! thy lesson here is writ

In characters we never can mistake: All would grow wiser, better, learning it, And all should learn it for their interest's sake. The judgments of Omnipotence o'ertake The best, for purposes unknown, yet wise. How few their thirst at joy's pure fountain slake! Poor child of dust! earth no true bliss supplies: Its roots are only here-it blossoms in the skies.

97

VANITY OF HUMAN WISHES.

[DR. JOHNSON.]

LET observation with extensive view,
Survey mankind, from China to Peru;
Remark each anxious toil, each eager strife,
And watch the busy scenes of crowded life;
Then say how hope and fear, desire and hate,
O'erspread with snares the clouded maze of fate.
Where wav'ring man, betray'd by vent'rous pride,
To tread the dreary paths without a guide;
As treach'rous phantoms in the mist delude,
Shun fancied ills, or chases airy good.

How rarely reason guides the stubborn choice,
Rules the bold hand, or prompts the suppliant voice.
How nations sink, by darling schemes oppress❜d,
When vengeance listens to the fool's request.
Fate wings with ev'ry wish th' afflictive dart,
Each gift of nature, and each grace of art,
With fatal heat impetuous courage glows,
With fatal sweetness elocution flows,
Impeachment stops the speaker's powerful breath,
And restless fire precipitates on earth.

But scarce observed, the knowing and the bold,
Fall in the general massacre of gold;
Wide-wasting pest! that rages unconfined,
And crowds with crimes the records of mankind,
For gold his sword the hireling ruffian draws,
For gold the hireling judge distorts the laws;
Wealin heap'd on wealth, nor truth nor safety buys,
The dangers gather as the treasures rise.
Let hist'ry tell where rival kings command,
And dubious title shakes the madded land,
When statutes glean the refuse of the sword,
How much more safe the vassal than the lord: