Myself in Him, in Light ineffable!

Come then, expressive Silence, muse His praise.

Hymn To God’s Power

Hail! Power Divine, who by thy sole command,

From the dark empty space,

Made the broad sea and solid land

Smile with a heavenly grace.

Made the high mountain and firm rock,

Where bleating cattle stray;

And the strong, stately, spreading oak,

That intercepts the day.

The rolling planets thou madest move,

By thy effective will;

And the revolving globes above

Their destined cours fulfil.

His mighty power, ye thunders, praise,

As through the heavens ye roll;

And his great name, ye lightnings, blaze,

Unto the distant pole.

Ye seas, in your eternal roar,

His sacred praise proclaim;

While the inactive sluggish shore

Re-echoes to the same.

Ye howling winds, howl out his praise,

And make the forests bow;

While through the air, the earth, and seas,

His solemn praise ye blow.

O yon high harmonious spheres,

Your powerful mover sing;

To him your circling course that steers,

Your tuneful praises bring.

Ungrateful mortals, catch the sound,

And in your numerous lays,

To all the listening world around,

The God of nature praise.

Hymn on Solitude

Hail, mildly pleasing solitude,

Companion of the wise and good;

But, from whose holy, piercing eye,

The herd of fools, and villains fly.

Oh! how I love with thee to walk,

And listen to thy whisper’d talk,

Which innocence, and truth imparts,

And melts the most obdurate hearts.

A thousand shapes you wear with ease,

And still in every shape you please.

Now wrapt in some mysterious dream,

A lone philosopher you seem;

Now quick from hill to vale you fly,

And now you sweep the vaulted sky;

A shepherd next, you haunt the plain,

And warble forth your oaten strain;

A lover now, with all the grace

Of that sweet passion in your face:

Then, calm’d to friendship, you assume

The gentle-looking Hertford’s bloom,

As, with her Musidora, she,

(Her Musidora fond of thee)

Amid the long withdrawing vale,

Awakes the rival’d nightingale.

Thine is the balmy breath of morn,

Just as the dew-bent rose is born;

And while meridian fervours beat,

Thine is the woodland dumb retreat;

But chief, when evening scenes decay,

And the faint landskip swims away,

Thine is the doubtful soft decline,

And that best hour of musing thine.

Descending angels bless thy train,

The virtues of the sage, and swain;

Plain Innocence in white array’d,

Before thee lifts her fearless head:

Religion’s beams around thee shine,

And cheer thy glooms with light divine:

About thee sports sweet Liberty;

And rapt Urania sings to thee.

Oh, let me pierce thy secret cell!

And in thy deep recesses dwell!

Perhaps from Norwood’s oak-clad hill,

When meditation has her fill,

I just may cast my careless eyes

Where London’s spiry turrets rise,

Think of its crimes, its cares, its pain,

Then shield me in the woods again.

An Ode on Aeolus’s Harp

Ethereal race, inhabitants of air,

Who hymn your God amid the secret grove,

Ye unseen beings, to my harp repair,

And raise majestic strains, or melt in love.

Those tender notes, how kindly they upbraid!

With what soft woe they thrill the lover’s heart!

Sure from the hand of some unhappy maid

Who died of love these sweet complainings part.

But hark! that strain was of a graver tone,

On the deep strings his hand some hermit throws;

Or he, the sacred Bard, who sat alone

In the drear waste and wept his people’s woes.

Such was the song which Zion’s children sung