Page:Poems (Bryant, 1821).djvu/17



Look on this beautiful world, and read the truth

In her fair page; see, every season brings

New change, to her, of everlasting youth;

Still the green soil, with joyous living things,

Swarms, the wide air is full of joyous wings,

And myriads, still, are happy in the sleep

Of ocean’s azure gulfs, and where he flings

The restless surge. Eternal love doth keep

In his complacent arms, the earth, the air, the deep.

Will then the merciful One, who stamp’d our race

With his own image, and who gave them sway

O’er earth, and the glad dwellers on her face,

Now that our flourishing nations far away

Are spread, where’er the moist earth drinks the day,

Forget the ancient care that taught and nurs’d

His latest offspring? will he quench the ray

Infus’d by his own forming smile at first,

And leave a work so fair all blighted and accurs’d?