Poet of Nature, gentlest of the wise,
Most airy of the fanciful, most keen
Of satirists, thy thoughts, like butterflies,
Still near the sweetest scented flowers have been:
With Titian's colors, thou canst sunset paint;
With Raphael's dignity, celestial love;
With Hogarth's pencil, each deceit and feint
Of meanness and hypocrisy reprove;
Canst to Devotion's highest flight sublime
Exalt the mind; by tenderest pathos' art
Dissolve in purifying tears the heart,
Or bid it, shuddering, recoil at crime;
The fond illusions of the youth and maid,
At which so many world-formed sages sneer,
When by thy altar-lighted torch displayed,
Our natural religion must appear.
All things in thee tend to one polar star;
Magnetic all thy influences are;
A labyrinth; a flowery wilderness.
Some in thy "slip-boxes" and honeymoons
Complain of—want of order, I confess,
But not of system in its highest sense.
Who asks a guiding clew through this wide mind,
In love of nature such will surely find,
In tropic climes, live like the tropic bird,
Whene'er a spice-fraught grove may tempt thy stray;
Nor be by cares of colder climes disturbed:
No frost the summer's bloom shall drive away;
Nature's wide temple and the azure dome
Have plan enough for the free spirit's home.