University of Virginia Library

Now ere we part, let meditation look
Once more on nature. Lo! the day is done;
And like the radiance of a lovely dream
Poetic slumber visions, softly melts,
And sweetly mellows into parting hues
The hour of sunset. From the ruby west
A flashing glory o'er the firmament
Deepens along, and over earth reflects
Beauty, which touches flower, and field, and fruit,
And yellow corn-fields sloping o'er the vale,
With charms more exquisite than garish noon
Inspires. And if on yonder height we stand,
Beneath us what a British Arcady
In lustre qualified with coming shade
Is then unveil'd, by sunny calm serened!
There as we pause, around our temples throng
The fresh-wing'd airs, from waving branches sent;
The breeze makes music; while the cadence low
Of distant sheep-bell dyingly comes on,
Or sinks delightfully on Feeling's ear.
Here Nature thrones enchantment: far-off hills
Crown'd with a coronet of glitt'ring trees,
Paler and paler, to the west retire
'Mid wood and coppice, lane, and hedges green,
With sun-bright cots, and farms of mossy roof;
While here and there some rustic temple shews
That gothic beauty, whose mysterious power
Acts on the eye like poetry in stone
Embodied. These in blent expression woo
The gazer; mix'd with many a fairy gleam
From rivers flashing, as the sun-ray tips
Their current, cheering it with gay surprise.
But now, a mellow shade of mantling hue
Advances; villages and towns retire
Like pictured visions, save where yonder tower
In its tall symmetry with golden tinge
Retains the sunbeam; and as home you wend,
Hark! on the ear of balmy Evening comes
The faint far chime of some cathedral-bell,
Whose pensive cadence to the fancy sounds
A curfew for Creation's sabbath rest.

That hallow'd rest is deep'ning: daylight ebbs;
But yet, or ever sinks yon Priest of light,
Around Him like a burning shrine the heavens
Gather and glow, and with their beams infold
His dying pomp; while colours rich, and deep,
And dazzling, woven from th' Almighty's loom
Of nature, all the occident inlay.
Brighter and brighter His dilated orb
Is now becoming; till, at length, He sinks
In soft decline magnificently calm
Beneath th' horizon, leaving all above
Tinged with his radiance; as true saints derive
From God's own heroes, when their dying beds
In farewell glory give the christian out,—
Flashes of meaning which the face o'erspread
With lustre, and the gazer's cheek impress
With light, whose source is immortality.

Vistas of thought, and avenues of mind
Where Truth may roam in philosophic shade,
Or Fancy by her shaping dreams begirt,
Image beyond what pict'ring words describe,
Open before us; while this pensive lull
And balmy prelude to the twilight's reign
Come o'er the heart, till with sabbatic love
Nature and mind responsively confer.
Oh, how the sacredness of silence steals
O'er all things! just as if a spirit-glide,
Inaudible but felt, through earth and air
Were passing. Mute and motionless, the trees
Stand in the gloom like sentinels entranced;
Not e'en an insect through the stirless air
At times is waking: boughs and birds repose;
While the dark shadows of yon distant hills
Arrest the eye, portentous and profound,
As if with speaking vastness: but the flowers
Breathe double fragrance, now the heated air
Is cooling; and a thousand secret plants
Which in the sun-warm noon their scents retain
Inviolate, a rich aroma yield;
Like hearts whose finer sympathies are shut
When fortune brightens, but when sorrow's night
Blackens around you, let their sweetness forth:
Or, as those promises the Spirit's love
To faith applies, which seldom while the sun
Of joy shines golden, make their treasures known,
But in our glooms, how gloriously they breathe
Their buried meanings into living force
And comfort!—But more hush'd and holy still,
Grows the dim landscape round the muser's tread
Who walks it, till he dreams his very step
Profane intrusion on the soundless air.
And now methinks, Miltonic eyes would view
Angelic Watchers of our mystic world
Patrolling earth, with immaterial garb
And tread unseen; or by their Lord employ'd
The wheels of nature to redress; or guide
The comings-on of Night, who soon begins
To spread Her mantle o'er the sleeping world.

Now rules the hour, when dormant Conscience wakes
If rack'd, or guilty; when Religion looks
On truths unwitness'd on the garish day,
While awed Imagination lives, and feels
Th' unborn poetry of speechless mind
Within her quicken'd: loud the heart-throbs beat;
And in this syncopé of nature's voice
What mute theology a moment wields
O'er the strain'd fancy! now indeed, we prove
That worded speech to manhood appertains,
But silence the Almighty's language is;
And faith can hear it, by Himself entoned
With inspirations from eternity.