The Rainbow
Moist, bright, and green, the landscape laughs around.
Full swell the woods; their every music wakes,
Mix'd in wild concert, with the warbling brooks
Increased, the distant bleatings of the hills,
And hollow lows responsive from the vales,
Whence, blending all, the sweeten'd zephyr springs.
Meantime, refracted from yon eastern cloud,
Bestriding earth, the grand ethereal bow
Shoots up immense; and every hue unfolds,
In fair proportion running from the red
To where the violet fades into the sky.
Here, awful Newton, the dissolving clouds
Form, fronting on the sun, thy showery prism;
And to the sage-instructed eye unfold
The various twine of light, by thee disclosed
From the white mingling maze. Not so the boy;
He wondering views the bright enchantment bend,
Delightful, o'er the radiant fields, and runs
To catch the falling glory; but amazed
Beholds th' amusive arch before him fly,
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poem by James Thomson
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The Study and Beauties of the Works of Nature
O Nature! all-sufficient! over all!
Enrich me with the knowledge of Thy works!
Snatch me to heaven; Thy rolling wonders there,
World beyond world, in infinite extent,
Profusely scatter'd o'er the void immense,
Shew me; their motions, periods, and their laws,
Give me to scan; through the disclosing deep
Light my blind way; the mineral strata there;
Thrust, blooming, thence the vegetable world;
O'er that the rising system more complex,
Of animals; and higher still, the mind,
The varied scene of quick-compounded thought,
And where the mixing passions endless shift;
These ever open to my ravish'd eye;
A search, the flight of time can ne'er exhaust!
But if to that unequal; if the blood,
In sluggish streams about my heart, forbid
That best ambition; under closing shades,
Inglorious, lay me by the lowly brook,
And whisper to my dreams. From Thee begin,
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poem by James Thomson
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Evening In Autumn
The western sun withdrawn the shorten'd day,
And humid evening, gliding o'er the sky
In her chill progress, to the ground condensed
The vapours throws. Where creeping waters ooze,
Where marshes stagnate, and where rivers wind,
Cluster the rolling fogs, and swim along
The dusky-mantled lawn. Meanwhile the moon,
Full-orb'd, and breaking through the scatter'd clouds,
Shews her broad visage in the crimson east.
Turn'd to the sun direct, her spotted disk,
Where mountains rise, umbrageous dales descend,
And caverns deep, as optic tube descries,
A smaller earth, gives us his blaze again,
Void of its flame, and sheds a softer day.
Now through the passing cloud she seems to stoop,
Now up the pure cerulean rides sublime.
Wide the pale deluge floats, and streaming mild
O'er the skied mountain to the shadowy vale,
While rocks and floods reflect the quivering gleam,
The whole air whitens with a boundless tide
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poem by James Thomson
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Nothing Formed In Vain
Let no presuming impious railer tax
Creative wisdom, as if aught was form'd
In vain, or not for admirable ends.
Shall little haughty ignorance pronounce
His works unwise, of which the smallest part
Excceeds the narrow vision of her mind?
As if, upon a full-proportion'd dome,
On swelling columns heav'd, the pride of art!
A critic-fly, whose feeble ray scarce spreads
An inch around, with blind presumption bold,
Should dare to tax the structure of the whole.
And lives the man, whose universal eye
Has swept at once th' unbounded scheme of things;
Mark'd their dependence so, and firm accord,
As with unfalt'ring accent to conclude,
That this availeth nought? Has any seen
The mighty chain of beings, less'ning down
From infinite perfection, to the brink
Of dreary nothing, desolate abyss!
From which astonish'd thought, recoiling, turns?
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poem by James Thomson
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Hymn To God's Power
Hail! Power Divine, who by thy sole command,
From the dark empty space,
Made the broad sea and solid land
Smile with a heavenly grace.
Made the high mountain and firm rock,
Where bleating cattle stray;
And the strong, stately, spreading oak,
That intercepts the day.
The rolling planets thou madest move,
By thy effective will;
And the revolving globes above
Their destined cours fulfil.
His mighty power, ye thunders, praise,
As through the heavens ye roll;
And his great name, ye lightnings, blaze,
Unto the distant pole.
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poem by James Thomson
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The Reapers In Autumn
Soon as the morning trembles o'er the sky,
And unperceived, unfolds the spreading day;
Before the ripen'd field the reapers stand,
In fair array.
At once they stoop and swell the lusty sheaves;
While through their cheerful band the rural talk,
The rural scandal, and the rural jest,
Fly harmless, to deceive the tedious time,
And steal unfelt the sultry hours away.
Behind, the master walks, builds up the shocks:
And, conscious, glancing oft on every side
His sated eye, feels his heart heave with joy.
The gleaners spread around, and here and there,
Spike after spike, their scanty harvest pick.
Be not too narrow, husbandman! but fling
From the full sheaf, with charitable stealth,
The liberal handful. Think, oh think!
How good the God of harvest is to you,
Who pours abundance o'er your flowing fields;
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poem by James Thomson
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Dawn In Summer
When now no more th' alternate twins are fired,
And Cancer reddens with the solar blaze,
Short is the doubtful empire of the Night;
And soon, observant of approaching Day,
The meek-eyed Morn appears, mother of dews,
At first faint-gleaming in the dappled east:
Till far o'er ether spreads the widening glow;
And, from before the lustre of her face,
White breaks the clouds away. With quicken'd step,
Brown Night retires: young Day pours in apace,
And opens all the lawny prospects wide.
The dripping rock, the mountain's misty top
Swell on the sight, and brighten with the dawn.
Blue, through the dusk, the smoking currents shine;
And from the bladed field the fearful hare
Limps, awkward; while along the forest glade
The wild deer trip, and often turning, gaze
At early passenger. Music awakes
The native voice of undissembled joy;
And thick around the woodland hymns arise.
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poem by James Thomson
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Fareweel, ye bughts
*
1. Fareweel, ye bughts, an' all your ewes,
An' fields whare bIoomin' heather grows;
Nae mair the sportin' lambs I'll see
Since my true love's forsaken me.
CHORUS.
Nae mair I'll hear wi' pleasure sing
The cheerfu' lav'rock in the Spring,
But sad in grief now I maun mourn,
Far, far frae her, o'er Logan-burn.
2. Alas! nae mair we'll meetings keep
At bughts, whan herds ca' in their sheep;
Nae mair amang the threshes green
We'll row, where we hae aften been.
CHORUS
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poem by James Thomson
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On Æolus's Harp
Ethereal race, inhabitants of air,
Who hymn your god amid the secret grove;
Ye unseen beings, to my harp repair,
And raise majestic strains, or melt in love.
Those tender notes, how kindly they upraid,
With what soft woe they thrill the lover's heart!
Sure from the hand of some unhappy maid,
Who died for love, these sweet complainings part.
But hark! that strain was of a graver tone,
On the deep strings his hand some hermit throws;
Or he, the sacred Bard, who sat alone
In the drear waste, and wept his people's woes.
Such was the song which Zion's children sung,
When by Euphrates' stream they made their plaint;
And to such sadly solemn notes are strung
Angelic harps, to soothe a dying saint.
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poem by James Thomson
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Mists In Autumn
Now, by the cool, declining year condescend,
Descend the copious exhalations, check'd,
As up the middle sky unseen they stole,
And roll the doubling fogs around the hill.
No more the mountain, horrid, vast, sublime,
Who pours a sweep of rivers from his sides,
And high between contending kingdoms rears
The rocky long division, fills the view
With great variety; but in a night
Of gath'ring vapour from the baffled sense
Sinks dark and dreary; thence expanding far,
The huge dusk gradual swallows up the plain:
Vanish the woods; the dim-seen river seems
Sullen and slow to roll the misty wave.
Ev'n in the height of noon, oppress'd, the sun
Sheds weak and blunt his wide-refracted ray,
Whence glaring oft with many a broaden'd orb
He frights the nations. Indistinct on earth,
Seen through the turbid air, beyond the life
Objects appear, and, wilder'd o'er the waste,
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poem by James Thomson
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