Are there not hours of an immortal birth,— Bright visitations from a purer sphere, That cannot live in language? Is there not A mood of glory, when the mind attuned To heaven, can out of dreams create her worlds?—
O for a summer noon, when light and breeze Sport on the grass, like ripples o'er a lake Alive with freshness! when the full round Sun, With the Creator's smile upon his face, Walks like a prince of glory through the path Of Heaven! - Thou vast, and ever-glorious sky, Mantling the earth with thy majestic robe.
A thunder-storm!—the eloquence of heaven, When every cloud is from its slumber riven, Who hath not paused beneath its hollow groan, And felt Omnipotence around him thrown? With what a gloom the ush’ring scene appears! The leaves all shiv’ring with instinctive fears, The waters curling with a fellow dread, A veiling fervour round creation spread, And, last, the heavy rain’s reluctant shower, With big drops patt’ring on the tree and bower, While wizard shapes the bowing sky deform,— All mark the coming of the thunder-storm!
Oh! now to be alone, on some grand height, Where heaven’s black curtains shadow all the sight, And watch the swollen clouds their bosom clash, While fleet and far the living lightnings flash... And see the fiery arrows fall and rise, In dizzy chase along the rattling skies,— How stirs the spirit while the echoes roll, And God, in thunder, rocks from pole to pole!
And now, Though haply mellow'd by correcting time, I thank thee, Heaven! that the bereaving world Hath not diminish'd the subliming hopes Of youth, in manhood's more imposing cares.
How sublime Upon a time-blanchd cliff to muse, and, while The eagle glories in a sea of air, To mingle with the scene around! - Survey The sun-warm heaven.
Oh! none are so absorb'd, as not to feel Sweet thoughts like music coming o'er the mind: When prayer, the purest incense of a soul, Hath risen to the throne of heaven, the heart Is mellow'd, and the shadows that becloud Our state of darken'd being, glide away.
And Thou, vast Ocean! on whose awful face Time’s iron feet can print no ruin-trace, By breezes lull’d, or by the storm-blasts driv’n, Thy majesty uplifts the mind to heaven.
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