Contents -BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD

Bliss Carman, et al., eds. The World’s Best Poetry. 1904.

III. The Seasons

A Hymn

James Thomson (1700–1748)

THESE, as they change, Almighty Father, these

Are but the varied God. The rolling year

Is full of thee. Forth in the pleasing Spring

Thy beauty walks, thy tenderness and love.

Wide flush the fields; the softening air is balm;

Echo the mountains round; the forest smiles;

And every sense and every heart is joy.

Then comes thy glory, in the Summer months,

With light and heat refulgent. Then thy sun

Shoots full perfection through the swelling year;

And oft thy voice in dreadful thunder speaks,

And oft at dawn, deep noon, or falling eve,

By brooks and groves in hollow-whispering gales

Thy bounty shines in Autumn unconfined,

And spreads a common feast for all that lives.

In Winter awful thou! with clouds and storms

Around thee thrown, tempest o’er tempest rolled.

Majestic darkness! on the whirlwind’s wing

Riding sublime, thou bidd’st the world adore,

And humblest nature with thy northern blast.

Mysterious round! what skill, what force divine,

Deep felt, in these appear! a simple train,

Yet so delightful mixed, with such kind art,

Such beauty and beneficence combined;

Shade, unperceived, so softening into shade;

And all so forming an harmonious whole,

That, as they still succeed, they ravish still.

But wandering oft, with brute unconscious gaze,

Man marks not thee, marks not the mighty hand,

That, ever busy, wheels the silent spheres;

Works in the secret deep; shoots, steaming, thence

The fair profusion that o’erspreads the Spring;

Flings from the Sun direct the flaming day;

Feeds every creature; hurls the tempest forth;

And, as on Earth this grateful change revolves,

With transport touches all the springs of life.

Nature, attend! join every living soul,

Beneath the spacious temple of the sky,

In adoration join; and, ardent, raise

One general song! To Him, ye vocal gales,

Breathe soft, whose spirit in your freshness breathes:

O, talk of him in solitary glooms;

Where, o’er the rock, the scarcely waving pine

Fills the brown shade with a religious awe.

And ye whose bolder note is heard afar,

Who shake the astonished world, lift high to Heaven

The impetuous song, and say from whom you rage.

His praise, ye brooks, attune, ye trembling rills;

And let me catch it as I muse along.

Ye headlong torrents, rapid, and profound;

Ye softer floods, that lead the humid maze

Along the vale; and thou, majestic main,

A secret world of wonders in thyself,

Sound his stupendous praise,—whose greater voice

Or bids you roar, or bids your roarings fall.

Soft roll your incense, herbs, and fruits, and flowers,

In mingled clouds to him,—whose Sun exalts,

Whose breath perfumes you, and whose pencil paints.

Ye forests bend, ye harvests wave, to him;

Breathe your still song into the reaper’s heart,

As home he goes beneath the joyous Moon.

Ye that keep watch in Heaven, as Earth asleep

Unconscious lies, effuse your mildest beams,

Ye constellations, while your angels strike,

Amid the spangled sky, the silver lyre.

Great source of day! best image here below

Of thy Creator, ever pouring wide,

From world to world, the vital ocean round,

On Nature write with every beam his praise.

The thunder rolls: be hushed the prostrate world;

While cloud to cloud returns the solemn hymn.

Bleat out afresh, ye hills; ye mossy rocks,

Retain the sound; the broad responsive low,

Ye valleys, raise; for the great Shepherd reigns,

And his unsuffering kingdom yet will come.

Ye woodlands all, awake: a boundless song

Burst from the groves! and when the restless day,

Expiring, lays the warbling world asleep,

Sweetest of birds! sweet Philomela, charm

The listening shades, and teach the night his praise.

Ye chief, for whom the whole creation smiles,

At once the head, the heart, and tongue of all,

Crown the great hymn! in swarming cities vast,

Assembled men to the deep organ join

The long-resounding voice, oft breaking clear,

At solemn pauses, through the swelling bass;

And, as each mingling flame increases each,

In one united ardor rise to Heaven.

Or if you rather choose the rural shade,

And find a fane in every sacred grove,

There let the shepherd’s flute, the virgin’s lay,

The prompting seraph, and the poet’s lyre,

Still sing the God of Seasons as they roll.

For me, when I forget the darling theme,

Whether the blossom blows, the Summer ray

Russets the plain, inspiring Autumn gleams,

Or Winter rises in the blackening east,—

Be my tongue mute, my fancy paint no more,

And, dead to joy, forget my heart to beat!

Should fate command me to the farthest verge

Of the green earth, to distant barbarous climes,

Rivers unknown to song,—where first the sun

Gilds Indian mountains, or his setting beam

Flames on the Atlantic isles,—’t is naught to me;

Since God is ever present, ever felt,

In the void waste as in the city full;

And where he vital breathes there must be joy.

When even at last the solemn hour shall come,

And wing my mystic flight to future worlds,

I cheerful will obey; there, with new powers,

Will rising wonders sing: I cannot go

Where Universal Love not smiles around,

Sustaining all yon orbs, and all their suns;

From seeming evil still educing good,

And better thence again, and better still,

In infinite progression. But I lose

Myself in him, in Light ineffable!

Come, then, expressive Silence, muse his praise.