"Look, look, through our glittering ranks afar, In the infinite azure, star after star, How they brighten and bloom as they swiftly pass! How the verdure runs o'er each rolling mass! And the path of the gentle winds is seen, Where the small waves dance, and the young woods lean. "And see, where the brighter day-beams pour, How the rainbows hang in the sunny shower; And the morn and eve, with their pomp of hues, Shift o'er the bright planets and shed their dews; And 'twixt them both, o'er the teeming ground, With her shadowy cone the night goes round! "Away, away! in our blossoming bowers, In the soft airs wrapping these spheres of ours, In the seas and fountains that shine with morn, See, Love is brooding, and Life is born, And breathing myriads are breaking from night, To rejoice, like us, in motion and light. "Glide on in your beauty, ye youthful spheres, To weave the dance that measures the years; Glide on, in the glory and gladness sent To the furthest wall of the firmament-- The boundless visible smile of Him To the veil of whose brow your lamps are dim." A FOREST HYMN. The groves were God's first temples. Ere man learned To hew the shaft, and lay the architrave, And spread the roof above them--ere he framed The lofty vault, to gather and roll back The sound of anthems; in the darkling wood, Amid the cool and silence, he knelt down, And offered to the Mightiest solemn thanks And supplication. For his simple heart Might not resist the sacred influences Which, from the stilly twilight of the place, And from the gray old trunks that high in heaven Mingled their mossy boughs, and from the sound Of the invisible breath that swayed at once All their green tops, stole over him, and bowed His spirit with the thought of boundless power And inaccessible majesty. Ah, why Should we, in the world's riper years, neglect God's ancient sanctuaries, and adore Only among the crowd, and under roofs That our frail hands have raised? Let me, at least, Here, in the shadow of this aged wood, Offer one hymn--thrice happy, if it find Acceptance in His ear.