fate,
  Vice in his high career would stand appalled,
  And heedless rambling impulse learn to think;
  The conscious heart of charity would warm,
  And her wide wish benevolence dilate;
  The social tear would rise, the social sigh;
  And into clear perfection, gradual bliss,
  Refining still, the social passions work.

  From SUMMER

  (LIFE’S MEANING TO THE GENEROUS MIND)

  Forever running an enchanted round,
  Passes the day, deceitful vain and void,
  As fleets the vision o’er the formful brain,
  This moment hurrying wild th’ impassioned soul,
  The nest in nothing lost.  ’Tis so to him,
  The dreamer of this earth, an idle blank;
  A sight of horror to the cruel wretch,
  Who all day long in sordid pleasure rolled,
  Himself an useless load, has squandered vile,
  Upon his scoundrel train, what might have cheered
  A drooping family of modest worth.

  But to the generous still-improving mind,
  That gives the hopeless heart to sing for joy,
  Diffusing kind beneficence around,
  Boastless,—­as now descends the silent dew,—­
  To him the long review of ordered life
  Is inward rapture, only to be felt.

  FROM SPRING

  [THE DIVINE FORCE IN SPRING]

  Come, gentle Spring, ethereal mildness, come! 
  And from the bosom of yon dropping cloud,
  While music wakes around, veiled in a shower
  Of shadowing roses, on our plains descend!

  O Hertford, fitted or to shine in courts
  With unaffected grace, or walk the plain
  With Innocence and Meditation joined
  In soft assemblage, listen to my song,
  Which thy own season paints, when nature all
  Is blooming and benevolent, like thee.

  And see where surly Winter passes off,
  Far to the north, and calls his ruffian blasts: 
  His blasts obey, and quit the howling hill,
  The shattered forest, and the ravaged vale;
  While softer gales succeed, at whose kind touch—­
  Dissolving snows in livid torrents lost—­
  The mountains lift their green heads to the sky. 
  As yet the trembling year is unconfirmed,
  And Winter oft at eve resumes the breeze,
  Chills the pale morn, and bids his driving sleets
  Deform the day delightless; so that scarce
  The bittern knows his time, with bill engulfed,
  To shake the sounding marsh, or from the shore
  The plovers when to scatter o’er the heath
  And sing their wild notes to the listening waste. 
  At last from Aries rolls the bounteous sun,
  And the bright Bull receives him.  Then no more
  Th’ expansive atmosphere is cramped with cold,
  But, full of life and vivifying soul,
  Lifts the light clouds sublime and spreads them thin,
  Fleecy and white, o’er all-surrounding heaven;