Let _me_ too burst the leaden bands of Sleep, And while the blinking stars, all faint and pale With their long watch, recall their courier-rays To their far orbits; and our earthly stars, The stars of Fashion, sick and wan as they, Are wheeling homeward to their feverous rest, Let _me_ walk forth among the silent groves, Or through the cool vales snuff the morning air. How fresh! how breathing! Every draught I take Seems filled with healthiest life, and sends the blood Rushing and tingling through my quickened veins, Like inspiration! How the fluent air, Fanned into motion by thy breezy wings, O, fragrant Morning! blows from off the earth The congregated vapors, dank and foul, By yesterday coagulate and mixed! Miasmas steaming up from sunless fens; The effluvia of vegetable death; Disease exhaled from pestilential beds, And Lust's rank pantings and the fumes of wine; All these, condensed in one pernicious gas By Noon's hot efflux and the reeking Night, Thy filtering breezes make as fresh and sweet As infant slumbers; pure as the virgin's breath Whispering her first love in the eager ear Of her heart's chosen. On this climbing hill, While, lost in ecstacy, I stand and gaze On the fresh beauties of a world disrobed, How does thy searching breath, oh, infant Day! Inspire the languid frame with new-born life, And all its sinking powers rejuvenate, Freshening the murky hollows of the soul! Good Heaven! How glorious this morning hour, Nature's new birth-time! All her mighty frame, In lowly vale, on lofty mountain-top, And wide savannah, stirs, with sprightful life, Life irrepressible, whose eager thrill Shoots to her very finger-tips, and makes Each little flower through all her delicate threads Each fibrous plant, each blade of corn or grass, And each tall tree, through all its limbs and leaves, Quiver and tremble. The increasing light Reveals the outlines of the shadowy hills, And, charm by charm, the landscape all comes forth, Wood, stream, and valley; while above that green And waving ocean swells an endless vault Of blue serenity, and round its verge Kindles and flashes with rubescent gleams The far horizon; till the whole appears A sapphire dome, which, edged with golden rim, Spans the green surges of an emerald sea. The Sun is still unseen; yet far before His chariot-wheels a train of glory marks His kindling track, and all the air is now A luminous ocean. Whence these floods of light, Rich with all hues? Say! have the sphered stars, Powdered in shining atoms, fallen and filled The ambient air with their invisible dews? Or have the fugitive particles of light, The Sun's lost emanations, which all night Lay hid in hollows of the earth, or slept In vegetable cells, come forth to greet Their monarch's coming? Are they pioneers Sent to prepare his way, and raise his bright