Part 16

Cowper.

Teachings of Nature.

Look on this beautiful World and read the truth In her fair page; see, every season brings New change to her of everlasting youth; Still the green soil with joyous living things Swarms; the wide air is full of joyous wings;

And myriads still are happy in the sleep Of Ocean’s azure gulfs, and where he flings The restless surge. Eternal love doth keep, In his complacent arms, the earth, the air, the deep.

Will, then, the Merciful One, who stamped our race With his own image, and who gave them sway O’er earth, and the glad dwellers on her face, Now that our swarming nations far away Are spread, where’er the moist earth drinks the day, Forget the ancient care that taught and nursed His latest offspring? Will he quench the ray, Infused by his own forming smile at first, And leave a work so fair all blighted and accursed?

Oh, no! a thousand cheerful omens give Hope of yet happier days, whose dawn is nigh. He who has tamed the elements shall not live The slave of his own passions; he whose eye Unwinds the eternal dances of the sky, And in the abyss of brightness dares to span The sun’s broad circle, rising yet more high,— In God’s magnificent works his will shall scan, And love and peace shall make their paradise with man.

W. C. Bryant.