Page:Memoir and poems of Phillis Wheatley, a native African and a slave.djvu/73

Rh Creation smiles in various beauty gay.

While day to night, and night succeeds to day:

That Wisdom which attends Jehovah's ways,

Shines most conspicuous in the solar rays:

Without them, destitute of heat and light,

This world would be the reign of endless night.

In their excess how would our race complain,

Abhorring life! how hate its lengthened chain!

From air, or dust, what numerous ills would rise!

What dire contagion taint the burning skies!

What pestilential vapor, fraught with death,

Would rise, and overspread the lands beneath!

Hail, smiling morn, that, from the orient main

Ascending, dost adorn the heavenly plain!

So rich, so various are thy beauteous dyes

That spread through all the circuit of the skies,

That, full of thee, my soul in rapture soars,

And thy great God, the cause of all, adores.

O'er beings infinite his love extends,

His Wisdom rules them, and his power defends.

When tasks diurnal tire the human frame,

The spirits faint, and dim the vital flame;

Then, too, that ever-active bounty shines,

Which not infinity of space confines.

The sable veil, that Night in silence draws,

Conceals effects, but shews the Almighty Cause;

Night seals in sleep the wide creation fair,

And all is peaceful but the brow of care.

Again, gay Phœbus, as the day before,

Wakes ev'ry eye, but what shall wake no more;