But let us leave the painter. Let us turn To those, who never swept the sounding lyre Or grasped the pencil,--ardent minds that hold A deep communion with the winds and waves, The youthful worshippers at Nature's shrine: What says the soft voice of the plaintive breeze, Mournfully sweeping through the forest boughs, In airy play moved gently by its breath? To such it hath a language, and it wins A tender echo from the youthful heart.--
With throbbing bosom Nature's student treads The sylvan haunts, exultingly leaps forth To hail the coming of the genial spring, Shedding around from her green lap the buds, In winter's rugged casket long enshrined, To form the chaplet of the infant year.-- Young pensive moralist!--'tis sweet to muse On beauties which escape the vulgar eye, To talk with Nature 'mid her woodland paths, And hear an answering voice in every breeze.-- You court her beauties with a lover's zeal; You hear her voice, nor understand the sound Which speaks to you--to all. The volume spread Before your dazzled eyes, so rich with life, Is a closed book--a fair illumined scroll, Traced in strange characters, unknown to you. Would you unfold the mystery, and read The record the eternal hand of God Has, of himself, on Nature's tablets graved? You must explore another wondrous book, Of deeper interest far--the book of life-- The glorious volume of unsullied truth!-- Time's rapid and undeviating march Tramples down empires, blots out names that once Bid fair for perpetuity of fame. Truth is alone eternal as the God Who on this everlasting basis placed His own immutable and moveless throne. Time to these writings daily adds new force, Deepening the traces of Jehovah's love, His fathomless, unbounded love to man.-- Peruse this volume, and then walk abroad And meditate in silence on the scenes Which lately charmed your unassisted sense, Till your soul burns within you, and breaks forth In holy hymns of gratitude and praise.--
Faith gives a grandeur to created things, Beyond the poet's lay or painter's art, Or upward flight of Fancy's eagle wing;-- Earth is the vista through which heaven is seen By him who, journeying through life's narrow vale, Seeks in the objects which around him rise To hold communion with his God! to trace The wisdom, goodness, majesty, and love, That clothed the lilies of the field, and twined The simple diadem of buds and leaves, So rich in their diversity of shade, Round Nature's brow,--and o'er the rugged hills Cast the light floating veil of purple haze, Which harmonizes to its own soft hue The broken precipice and barren heath. Here admiration may have ample scope: The spirit soaring upward drinks in light From other worlds, and in the choral song Of happy birds among the forest bowers, Hears the seraphic and harmonious strains That angels chant around the eternal throne!-- To him there is an anthem in the breeze, A burst of triumph in the thunder's peal, Which, slowly rolling through the troubled air, Strikes man with terror, and yet praises God!--