Thou need'st not flutter from thy half-built nest,
Whene'er thou hear’st man's hurrying feet go by,
Fearing his eye for harm may on thee rest,
Or he thy young unfinished cottage spy;
All will not heed thee on that swinging bough,
Nor care that round thy shelter spring the leaves,
Nor watch thee on the pool's wet margin now,
For clay to plaster straws thy cunning weaves ;
All will not hear thy sweet out-pouring joy,
That with morn's stillness blends the voice of song,
For over-anxious cares their souls employ,
That else upon thy music borne along
And the light wings of heart-ascending prayer
Had learned that Heaven is pleased thy simple joys to
AND now, in accents deep and low,
Like voice of fondly-cherished wo,
The Sylph of Autumn sad: Though I may not of raptures sing, That graced the gentle song of Spring, Like Summer, playful pleasures bring,
Thy youthful heart to glad;
Yet still may I in hope aspire
Thy heart to touch with chaster fire,
And purifying love:
For I with vision high and holy,
And spell of quick’ning melancholy,
Thy soul from sublunary folly
First raised to worlds above,
What though be mine the treasures fair Of purple grape and yellow pear,
And fruits of various hue,
And harvests rich of golden grain,
That dance in waves along the plain
To merry song of reaping swain,
Beneath the welkin blue;
With these I may not urge my suit,
Of Summer's patient toil the fruit,
For mortal purpose given;
Nor may it fit my sober mood
To sing of sweetly murmuring flood,
Or dyes of many-coloured wood,
That mock the bow of heaven.
But, know, 'twas mine the secret power
That waked thee at the midnight hour
In bleak November's reign:
'Twas I the spell around thee cast,
When thou didst hear the hollow blast
In murmurs tell of pleasures past,
That ne'er would come again :
And led thee, when the storm was o'er,
To hear the sullen ocean roar,
By dreadful calm opprest;
Which, still, though not a breeze was there,
'Twas I, when thou, subdued by wo, les
Didst watch the leaves descending slow you
To each a moral gave;
And as they moved in mournful train,
With rustling sound, along the plain,
Taught them to sing a seraph's strain
Of peace within the grave.
And then, upraised thy streaming eye,
I met thee in the western sky
In pomp of evening cloud;
That, while with varying form it rolled,
Some wizard's castle seemed of gold,
And now a crimsoned knight of old,
Or king in purple proud.
And, last, as sunk the setting sun,
And Evening with her shadows dun,
The gorgeous pageant past,
'Twas then of life a mimic show,
Of human grandeur here below,
Which thus beneath the fatal blow
Of Death must fall at last.
Oh, then with what aspiring gaze
Didst thou thy tranced vision raise
To yonder orbs on high,
And think how wondrous, how sublime
"Twere upward to their spheres to climb,
And live, beyond the reach of Time,
Child of Eternity!
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