AH! when did painter's magic pencil trace
Scenes of such gentle loveliness, combin'd
With beautiful and dread magnificence;
Where Art has lent not ev'n her simplest grace,
But Nature lingers in her early beauty,
Like Eve amid the rocks and garden bowers
Of Eden's happy vale, when innocent,
In purity and love, she calmly slept,
And the soul-breathing, godlike countenance
Of Adam, hung over her enamoured :
When shame had never left upon the cheek
Her hot and deep'ning blush, nor dimm'd with
The eye so beautiful and bright, nor hung
Her cloud upon the clear majestic brow-
Were memory extinct, a sinless child
Might deem the glorious dawn of nature glow'd.
Upon this cloudless sky, the earliest dew
Weigh'd down the fair heads of these tender
flowers,
To the first sun, the lovely depths revealing
Of their ambrosial cells; might deem himself
The solitary inmate of the world,
And his light tread, the only footstep trac'd
Upon the printless herbage by mankind.
Mark, how in airy height pre-eminent
The spiral mountains pierce the azure sky;
And how, in dropping lightness fleecy clouds
Around them wreath and sever; from their
sides
How many rills of trickling silver steal,
Emerging in white lustre from the gloom
Of the dark pine woods, whose wild branches fringe
The spotless and perpetual snows above.
Mark, how the frolic sumbeams melt among
The cloudy spray of yonder stream, that pours
Its broad unbroken flood into the vale:
In hues of vivid splendour, blending there
The rich and delicate rainbow, or, distinct
With rays of golden light, the mist dividing.
Through fields of emerald verdure rolls along
The swift and rushing river, o'er whose banks
Waves many a giant birch its drooping wreaths,
From branches gleaming with a pearl-like
lustre.
Here dark green beeches form a grove of shade,
Around whose polish'd trunks the eglantine
Its faintly blushing garlands lightly twines.
Art has not turn'd that lucid rivulet
In mazy windings through the velvet mead.
Here, gushing brightly in a crystal fount,
'Mid scatter'd rocks, o'ergrown with moss and
flowers;
Here, smoothly flowing o'er the level green,
With scarce a, ripple on its glossy wave.
Art has not group'd the arching shrubs which form
That bower, o'ershaded from the mid-day sun.
Mortality has never wanton'd here,
And left the relics of a short-liv'd reign.
No crumbling columns, no disjointed plinth,
Profusely strew the ground in abject grace,
Where once the palace rear'd its sculptur'd
walls,
Or, in their slight and exquisite proportion,
Ionic shafts upheld the marble fane.
Here, to lascivious Gods, the innocent maid
Has never knelt, or rais'd the choral song;
Ne'er cull'd the blossoms of this vale, to waste
Their dying persume on some heathen shrine.
Oh, seek no Dryads in this peaceful shade!
Invoke no Genii of these wondrous scenes!
For here, the numbers of the classic muse,
With all their pomp of fabled imagery,
Would sound less sweetly than the careless wind
Fanning the green leaves, and from every flower
Blending a gale of perfume, as it flies
With its own wildly plaintive melody,
Now, rising louder through the cluster'd trees,
Or dying, as it lingers on the stream,
Which curls and dimples to its fitful breath.
Behold that butterfly, whose roving flight
Has settled on a Daphne's crimson bell,
Opening and closing to the golden light
Its gem-like wings. Then to the monarch Alp,
Rising in peerless majesty above
The loftiest mountains, turn thy wondering gaze.
The God who deck'd that insect's plumy down
With hues so delicate, whose goodness gave
Colour and fragrance to that blushing flower;
He, who in temples, made by mortal hands,
Abideth not; with dread sublimity
Is thron'd upon the pathless mountain tops,
When in their wild tumultuous strife engage
The warring elements; disclosing now
Depths of ethereal flame, now darkly shrouding
With thick and lurid canopy of cloud
The heaven-aspiring heights. He smiles amid The soft and silver webs, that wreathingly
In fleecy folds hang round their giant sides, Ting'd by the rose hues which the snows are flooding,
When evening melts into the west away.-
Oh! that in scenes like these, the meanly great,
Whose talents promis'd what their lives belied,
Should e'er have wander'd, and refus❜d to join
In grateful eloquence with all around!
Rousseau! Voltaire! wisdom in vain for you Display'd her stores of thought; in vain bestow'd
Talents to captivate a listening world;
Imperfect all without the guiding light
Of humble piety. Rousseau, couldst thou
Borrow from nature all her loveliest hues,
And imitate her simple elegance,
Dipping thy pencil in the beams of Heaven,
To clothe and colour with ethereal beauty
The gross distemper'd images of sin?
Couldst thou, Voltaire, whose gifted genius
shone
Brilliant alike on every varied theme,
Pour the cold lustre of thy heartless wit,
To lure unheeding man to death eternal?
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