Nature and Elements

Accuse not Nature, she hath done her part; Do thou but thine.

Liquid lapse of murmuring streams.

Liquid lapse of murmuring streams.

The planets in their stations list’ning stood, While the bright pomp ascended jubilant. Open, ye everlasting gates, they sung, Open, ye heavens, your living doors; let in The great Creator from his work return’d Magnificent, his six days’ work, a world.

There Leviathan Hugest of living creatures, on the deep Stretch’d like a promontory sleeps or swims, And seems a moving land, and at his gills Draws in, and at his trunk spouts out a sea.

There Leviathan Hugest of living creatures, on the deep Stretch’d like a promontory sleeps or swims, And seems a moving land, and at his gills Draws in, and at his trunk spouts out a sea.

Morn, Wak’d by the circling hours, with rosy hand Unbarr’d the gates of light.

Morn, Wak’d by the circling hours, with rosy hand Unbarr’d the gates of light.

A wilderness of sweets.

The starry cope Of heaven.

Squat like a toad, close at the ear of Eve.

Sweet the coming on Of grateful ev’ning mild, then silent night With this her solemn bird, and this fair moon, And these the gems of heaven, her starry train.

With thee conversing I forget all time, All seasons, and their change; all please alike. Sweet is the breath of morn, her rising sweet, With charm of earliest birds.

With thee conversing I forget all time, All seasons, and their change; all please alike. Sweet is the breath of morn, her rising sweet, With charm of earliest birds.

The wakeful nightingale, She all night long her amorous descant sung; Silence was pleas’d: now glow’d the firmament With living sapphires: Hesperus, that led The starry host, rode brightest, till the moon, Rising in clouded majesty, at length Apparent queen unveil’d her peerless light, And o’er the dark her silver mantle threw.

The wakeful nightingale, She all night long her amorous descant sung; Silence was pleas’d: now glow’d the firmament With living sapphires: Hesperus, that led The starry host, rode brightest, till the moon, Rising in clouded majesty, at length Apparent queen unveil’d her peerless light, And o’er the dark her silver mantle threw.

Now came still evening on, and twilight gray Had in her sober livery all things clad.

Not that fair field Of Enna, where Proserpin gathering flowers Herself a fairer flower by gloomy Dis Was gathered, which cost Ceres all that pain To seek her through the world.

Flowers of all hue, and without thorn the rose.

The middle tree and highest there that grew, Sat like a cormorant.

At whose sight all the stars Hide their diminish’d heads. 6

And fast by hanging in a golden chain, This pendent world, in bigness as a star Of smallest magnitude close by the moon.

Thick as autumnal leaves that strow the brooks In Vallombrosa.

Thy liquid notes that close the eye of day.