CLEAR shone the morn, the gale was fair, When from Corunna's crowded port, With many a cheerful shout and loud acclaim, The huge Armada passed.
To England's shores their streamers point, To England's shores their sails are spread; They go to triumph o'er the sea-girt land, And Rome has blest their arms.
Along the ocean's echoing verge, Along the mountain-range of rocks, The clustering multitudes behold their pomp, And raise the votive prayer.
Commingling with the ocean's roar, Ceaseless and hoarse their murmurs rise, And soon they trust to see the wingèd bark That bears good tidings home.
The watch-tower now in distance sinks,
And now Galicia's mountain rocks
Faint as the far-off clouds of evening lie,
And now they fade away.
Each like some moving citadel,
On through the waves they sail sublime; And now the Spaniards see the silvery cliffs, Behold the sea-girt land!
O fools! to think that ever foe
Should triumph o'er that sea-girt land! O fools! to think that ever Britain's sons Should wear the stranger's yoke!
For not in vain hath Nature rear'd,
Around her coast those silvery cliffs;
For not in vain old Ocean spreads his waves,
To guard his favourite isle.
On come her gallant mariners!
What now avail Rome's boasted charms? Where are the Spaniard's vaunts of eager wrath ? His hopes of conquest now?
And hark! the angry winds arise,
Old Ocean heaves his angry waves ;
The winds and waves against the invaders fight,
To guard the sea-girt land.
Howling around his palace-towers, The Spanish despot hears the storm; He thinks upon his navies far away, And boding doubts arise.
Long over Biscay's boisterous surge,
The watchman's aching eye shall strain !
Long shall he gaze, but never winged bark
Shall bear good tidings home.
She too an artist is, and laughs at man,
Who calls on rules the sightly hexagon
With truth to form; a cunning architect,
Who at the roof begins her golden work,
And builds without foundation. How she toils,
And still from bud to bud, from flower to flower
Travels the livelong day. Ye idle drones,
Who rather pilfer than your bread obtain
By honest means like these, behold and learn
How good, how fair, how honourable 'tis
To live by industry. The busy tribes
Of bees so emulous, are daily fed
With Heaven's peculiar manna. 'Tis for them,
Unwearied alchymists, the blooming world
Still to the diligent and active, good,
Their very labour makes the certain cause
ERE yet the rising winds begin to roar,
The working seas advance to wash the shore;
Soft whispers run along the leafy woods,
And mountains whistle to the murmuring floods;
Even the doubtful billows scarce abstain
From the toss'd vessel on the troubled main ;
When crying cormorants forsake the sea,
And stretching to the covert wing their way;
When sportful coots run skimming o'er the strand;
When watchful herons leave their watery stand,
And mounting upward, with erected flight,
Gain on the skies, and soar above the sight.
And oft before tempestuous winds arise,
The seeming stars fall headlong from the skies,
And shooting through the darkness, gild the night
With sweeping glories, and long trails of light;
And chaff with eddy winds is whirl'd around;
And dancing leaves are lifted from the ground;
And floating feathers on the waters play.
But when the winged thunder takes his way
From the cold north, and east and west engage,
And at their frontiers meet with equal rage,
The clouds are crush'd, a flood of gather'd rain
The hollow ditches fills, and floats the plain,
And sailors furl their dropping sheets amain.
THERE is in souls a sympathy with sounds;
And as the mind is pitch'd, the ear is pleased
With melting airs or martial, brisk or grave;
Some chord in unison with what we hear,
Is touched within us, and the heart replies.
How soft the music of those village bells,
Falling at intervals upon the ear
In cadence sweet; now dying all away,
Now pealing loud again, and louder still,
Clear and sonorous as the gale comes on!
With easy force it opens all the cells
Where memory slept. Wherever I have heard
A kindred melody, the scene recurs,
And with it all its pleasures and its pains.
ALL are but parts of one stupendous whole,
Whose body Nature is, and God the soul;
That, changed through all, and yet in all the same,
Great in the earth, as in th' ethereal frame;
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