And every beauty, delicate or bold,
Obvious or more remote, with livelier sense,
Diffusive painted on the rapid mind.
Tutor'd by thee, hence Poetry exalts
Her voice to ages; and informs the page
With music, image, sentiment, and thought,
Never to die! the treasure of mankind!
Their highest honour, and the truest joy!
Without thee what were unenlighten'd 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, mix'd of tenderness and care,
Nor moral excellence, nor social bliss,
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
The burning line, or dares the wint'ry 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
Than non-existence worse: But, taught by thee,
Ours are the plans of policy, and peace;
To live like brothers, and conjunctive all
Embellish life. While thus laborious crouds
Ply the tough oar, Philosophy directs
The ruling helm ; or like the liberal breath
Of potent heaven, invisible, the sail
Swells out, and bears th' inferior world along.
No to this evanescent speck of earth
Poorly confin'd, the radiant tracts on high
Are her exalted range; intent to gaze
Creation thro'; and, from that full complex
Of never- -ending wonders, to conceive
Of the sole being right, who spoke the word,
And nature mov'd complete. With inward view,'
Thence on th' ideal kingdom swift she turns
Her eye; and instant, at her powerful glance,
Th' 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
Unfetter'd, and unmix'd. 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 form'd,
And ever rising with the rising mind.
THE suject proposed. Addressed to Mr Onslow. A prospect of the fields ready for harvest. Reflections in praise of industry raised by that view. Reaping. A tale relative to it. A harvest-storm. Shooting and hunting; their barbarity. A ludicrous account of foxhunting. A view of an orchard. Wall-fruit. A vineyard. A description of fogs frequent in the latter part of Autumn: Whence a digression, enquiring into the rise of fountains, and rivers. Birds of season considered, that now shift their habitation. The prodigious number of them that cover the northen and western isles of Scotland: Hence a view of the country. A prospect of the discoloured, fading woods. After a gentle dusky day, moon - light. Autumnal meteors. Morning; to which succeeds a I calm, pure, sun-shiny day, such as usually shuts up the season. The harvest being gathered in, the country dissolved in joy. The whole concludes with a panegyric on a philosophical country life.
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