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| EMBOSOM’D in thy shades, O Solitude! | |
| Thy leafy canopies and forests rude; | |
| Where silence reigns, save when the moping bird, | |
| Tuneless, from yonder ivied nook is heard | |
| To greet the coming night; remote from scenes of care, | 5 |
| I sit me down your quietude to share; | |
| And all resign’d to contemplation’s power, | |
| Devote to thee one still propitious hour; | |
| One hour, when, earth forgot, the spirit wings | |
| Her heaven-bound flight, and, as she upward springs, | 10 |
| Seems to commune with long departed years, | |
| To talk with gods, and mingle with the spheres. | |
| Ye labyrinthian wilds, and russet glades— | |
| Dark-nodding pines, and venerable shades— | |
| Ye time-worn steeps of gray—ye hermit cells, | 15 |
| Where, queen of sylvan talk, sweet echo dwells, | |
| Voiced daughter of the air—thou towering chain | |
| Of everlasting hills, whose tops attain | |
| The pendant cloud, and greet the morning beam— | |
| Fountains! from whose redundant bosoms stream | 20 |
| The winding crystal brooks, and, as they take | |
| Their course, to fancy’s ear wild music make; | |
| Ye oaks! briarean monarchs of the wood, | |
| That unsubdued the elements have stood; | |
| And still that seem indignant to defy | 25 |
| The accumulated forces of the sky:— | |
| Abodes impervious to the day! Ye caves, | |
| That murmur to the distant roar of waves, | |
| When, by the winds upborne, old ocean pours | |
| His beating surge along the far-off shores; | 30 |
| Ye rocks, colossal sentinels, whose forms | |
| For ages have withstood the siege of storms; | |
| Upon whose rough and adamantine peak, | |
| The earth-disdaining eagle whets his beak, | |
| Whence sightless soaring, ere the day’s begun, | 35 |
| Leaves the dark vales below, and welcomes up the sun: | |
| Ye consecrated haunts, long fondly woo’d | |
| On your repose no stranger feet intrude; | |
| Fled from the busy stirring city’s hum, | |
| To your recess a worshipper I come; | 40 |
| From a toss’d world, in thee a calm I find, | |
| Benign content—the sabbath of the mind. * * * * | |
| And thou, of these abodes, O genius blest, | |
| To your domain receive your votary guest; | |
| To you, amidst your sylvan lodge, and wild attire, | 45 |
| The muse devotes the meditative lyre. | |
| Fill’d with thy presence, oft at twilight gray, | |
| What time begin to droop the things of day, | |
| When shadowy shapes, seen through the vapor dim, | |
| To fancy’s bodying eye take form and limb; | 50 |
| Along thy gloom’s sequester’d paths I tread, | |
| And hold communion with the illustrious dead; | |
| Imagination then, with eye of light, | |
| Imps her bold wing and meditates her flight; | |
| To worlds unknown, from mortal bounds, she hies, | 55 |
| Spurns the dull earth, and claims her kindred skies. | |
| There breathes a language in the trackless woods, | |
| In voiceless glens, and mountain solitudes; | |
| Amidst unpeopled rocks there lives for me | |
| A something more than man’s society; | 60 |
| I hear some call in every passing wind; | |
| In every tree a monitor I find; | |
| On every stone I trace a moral law, | |
| And from each brook an admonition draw:— | |
| Whate’er I note, or wheresoe’er I turn, | 65 |
| From such mysterious Providence I learn; | |
| Above, around, beneath, impress’d I see | |
| The apparent finger of the Deity:— | |
| On every leaf, in each unfolding flower | |
| I read the imaged evidence of—power. | 70 |
| Of power!—whose vital principle, from nought, | |
| This fair creation into being brought; | |
| Which will’d—and from oblivion rose the earth, | |
| From chaos, form; from lifeless matter, birth; | |
| Of power—the balanced worlds, on high, that hung, | 75 |
| At whose omnific word the daybeam sprung, | |
| And all the morning stars together sung; | |
| O’er all created things supreme that reigns, | |
| Whose wisdom fashion’d, and whose might sustains. * * * * | |
| The noon of midnight reigns—the solemn hour | 80 |
| O’er subject things the sovereignty of power | |
| Exclusive holds;—above, around, beneath, | |
| The all-pervading spirit seems to breathe | |
| Of musing loneliness—the cloudless sky— | |
| Earth’s azure roof—a glorious canopy | 85 |
| Stretches from verge to verge—serenely fair | |
| The stars look out through crystal fields of air, | |
| And, as in concert there they shine, dispense, | |
| To rapt devotion’s eye, harmonious influence. | |
| Welcome ye thickets! hail propitious shade! | 90 |
| Sacred to song—for contemplation made— | |
| Your quietude I court—hence be from me | |
| The crowded mart—the idle pageantry | |
| Of fool’d ambition’s pride—the cares, the strife, | |
| Of cheated pleasure’s superficial life:— | 95 |
| But mine, be mine, your hospitable wild— | |
| Where halcyon peace, of heaven the favor’d child, | |
| Delights to dwell—be mine your dwelling rude, | |
| Bland nurse of thought—congenial Solitude. | |
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