Now (retrospective of the hour of sighs—
Disconsolate moments—inundated eyes),
When disconcerted George look’d, but in vain!
As Arnold bore away his daughter Jane,
The trundled dust uprising points the way,
But disappoints his all-observant eye;
Obedient then to its instructive mood
His heart, relaxing, propagates the flood.
The Great All-ruler of a cloudless sky
Roll’d on and on the lovely lamp of joy,
And shed its holiness o’er nature’s face;
And thus, Omniscient, with compelling grace,
Ordain’d the products of the bounteous earth,
All in due season, to come smiling forth.
(Such was the hour and such the transient day
When Arnold’s carriage roll’d along the way.)
Ah! Who the Artist,—Whose the skilful hand
Impels the beams which fructify the land?
’Tis He, ’tis His, who governs earth and air,
Who pois’d the sun, the moon, and every star,
And who directs them morning, noon, and night,
Yea, ever since He said: and gave the light!
The painter imitates with studied stroke
The ruffled ocean, or the stirring brook;
But where the roarings of the troubled main
So well defined upon the painted plain?
Or where’s the music of the humble thrush,
So well depicted by his able brush
Perch’d on yon twig of nut-brown hazel-bush?
Or where the whisperings of the rustling trees,
As through their branches curl the gentle breeze?—
Or, when ’presented in a wintry storm,
We hear no moaning through the leafless form.
And then again—behold his[198] emerald glade
How breezy-bent it greets the crescent blade,
When, as it were, ten mowers (rosy blithe)
Advance by steps and sway the merc’less scythe;
Aye: how so natural the golden grain
Seems, aged-like, incline to earth again,
And, as the harvesters with rigid eye
Thrust forth the sickle most contemptuously,
How great the fall, but where the weapon’s cry? * * *
[198] The painter’s.