The rolling year Is full of thee.

Forth in the pleasing Spring Thy beauty walks, thy tenderness and love.
Wide flush the fields; the softening air is balm; Echo the mountains round; the forest smiles; And every sense and every 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-whispering gales.[159] A yellow-floating pomp, thy bounty shines In Autumn unconfined.

Thrown from thy lap, Profuse o'er nature, falls the lucid shower Of beamy fruits; and, in a radiant stream, Into the stores of sterile Winter pours.
In winter awful thou! with clouds and storms Around thee thrown--tempest o'er tempest rolled.
Majestic darkness! on the whirlwind's wing Riding sublime, thou bidst the world adore,[160] 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 mixed, with such kind art, Such beauty and beneficence combined! Shade unperceived so softening into shade! And all so forming an harmonious whole, That, as they still succeed, they ravish still.
* * * * * Nature attend! Join, every living soul, Beneath the spacious temple of the sky-- In adoration join; and, ardent, raise One general song! To him, ye vocal gales, Breathe soft, whose spirit in your freshness breathes; Oh! 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 the astonished world, lift high to heaven The 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 flowers, 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, As home he goes beneath the joyous moon.
* * * * * Bleat out afresh, ye hills! ye mossy rocks, Retain the sound; the broad responsive low, Ye valleys raise; for the great Shepherd reigns, And his unsuffering kingdom yet will come.
* * * * * Ye chief, for whom the whole creation smiles, At once the head, the heart, and tongue of all, Crown the great hymn! in swarming cities vast, Assembled men, to the deep organ join The long-resounding voice, oft breaking clear, At solemn pauses, through the swelling base; And, as each mingling flame increases each, In one united ardour rise to heaven.
* * * * * Should fate command me to the farthest verge Of the green earth, to distant barbarous climes, Rivers unknown to song, where first the sun Gilds Indian mountains, or his setting beam Flames on the Atlantic isles, 'tis nought to me, Since God is ever present, ever felt, In the void waste as in the city full; And where he vital breathes there must be joy.
* * * * * The worship of intellectual power in laws and inventions is the main delight of the song; not the living presence of creative love, which never sings its own praises, but spends itself in giving.

Still, although there has passed away a glory from the world of song, although the fervour of childlike worship has vanished for a season, there are signs in these verses of a new dawn of devotion.