’Spirit of Nature! thou
Life of interminable multitudes;
Soul of those mighty spheres
Whose changeless paths through
Heaven’s deep silence lie;
Soul of that smallest being, 230
The dwelling of whose life
Is one faint April sun-gleam;—­
Man, like these passive things,
Thy will unconsciously fulfilleth: 
Like theirs, his age of endless peace, 235
Which time is fast maturing,
Will swiftly, surely come;
And the unbounded frame, which thou pervadest,
Will be without a flaw
Marring its perfect symmetry. 240

4.

’How beautiful this night! the balmiest sigh,
Which vernal zephyrs breathe in evening’s ear,
Were discord to the speaking quietude
That wraps this moveless scene.  Heaven’s ebon vault,
Studded with stars unutterably bright, 5
Through which the moon’s unclouded grandeur rolls,
Seems like a canopy which love had spread
To curtain her sleeping world.  Yon gentle hills,
Robed in a garment of untrodden snow;
Yon darksome rocks, whence icicles depend, 10
So stainless, that their white and glittering spires
Tinge not the moon’s pure beam; yon castled steep,
Whose banner hangeth o’er the time-worn tower
So idly, that rapt fancy deemeth it
A metaphor of peace;—­all form a scene 15
Where musing Solitude might love to lift
Her soul above this sphere of earthliness;
Where Silence undisturbed might watch alone,
So cold, so bright, so still. 
The orb of day,
In southern climes, o’er ocean’s waveless field 20
Sinks sweetly smiling:  not the faintest breath
Steals o’er the unruffled deep; the clouds of eve
Reflect unmoved the lingering beam of day;
And vesper’s image on the western main
Is beautifully still.  To-morrow comes:  25
Cloud upon cloud, in dark and deepening mass,
Roll o’er the blackened waters; the deep roar
Of distant thunder mutters awfully;
Tempest unfolds its pinion o’er the gloom
That shrouds the boiling surge; the pitiless fiend, 30
With all his winds and lightnings, tracks his prey;
The torn deep yawns,—­the vessel finds a grave
Beneath its jagged gulf. 
Ah! whence yon glare
That fires the arch of Heaven!—­that dark red smoke
Blotting the silver moon?  The stars are quenched 35
In darkness, and the pure and spangling snow
Gleams faintly through the gloom that gathers round! 
Hark to that roar, whose swift and deaf’ning peals
In countless echoes through the mountains ring,
Startling pale Midnight on her starry throne! 40
Now swells the intermingling din; the jar