The men it meets with the sweet storm. A gale, To which compar'd nectar itself is vile, Fills the sev'n channels of the misty Nile. O happy bird! sole heir to thy own dust! Death, to whose force all other creatures must Submit, saves thee. Thy ashes make thee rise; 'Tis not thy nature, but thy age that dies. Thou hast seen all! and to the times that run Thou art as great a witness as the sun. Thou saw'st the deluge, when the sea outvied The land, and drown'd the mountains with the tide. What year the straggling Phaeton did fire The world, thou know'st. And no plagues can conspire Against thy life; alone thou dost arise Above mortality; the destinies Spin not thy days out with their fatal clue; They have no law, to which thy life is due. PIOUS THOUGHTS AND EJACULATIONS. TO HIS BOOKS. Bright books! the perspectives to our weak sights, The clear projections of discerning lights, Burning and shining thoughts, man's posthume day, The track of fled souls, and their Milky Way, The dead alive and busy, the still voice Of enlarg'd spirits, kind Heav'n's white decoys! Who lives with you, lives like those knowing flow'rs, Which in commerce with light spend all their hours: Which shut to clouds, and shadows nicely shun, But with glad haste unveil to kiss the sun. Beneath you, all is dark, and a dead night, Which whoso lives in, wants both health and sight. By sucking you, the wise--like bees--do grow Healing and rich, though this they do most slow, Because most choicely; for as great a store Have we of books, as bees of herbs, or more: And the great task, to try, then know, the good. To discern weeds, and judge of wholesome food, Is a rare, scant performance: for man dies Oft ere 'tis done, while the bee feeds and flies. But you were all choice flow'rs, all set and drest By old sage florists, who well knew the best: And I amidst you all am turned a weed! Not wanting knowledge, but for want of heed. Then thank thyself, wild fool, that wouldst not be Content to know--what was too much for thee! LOOKING BACK. Fair shining mountains of my pilgrimage And flowery vales, whose flow'rs were stars, The days and nights of my first happy age; An age without distaste and wars! When I by thoughts ascend your sunny heads, And mind those sacred midnight lights By which I walk'd, when curtain'd rooms and beds Confin'd or seal'd up others' sights: O then, how bright, And quick a light Doth brush my heart and scatter night; Chasing that shade, Which my sins made, While I so spring, as if I could not fade! How brave a prospect is a bright back-side! Where flow'rs and palms refresh the eye! And days well spent like the glad East abide, Whose morning-glories cannot die! THE SHOWER.