NATURE.
FROM THE FRENCH OF BERANGER.
How wondrous Nature’s plan appears,
In pleasures fruitful as in woes!
The world immersed in hopeless tears,
An ample meed of suffering knows.
But Beauty binds us to her feet,
And still the mantling cup is sweet.
Flow, generous wine—and smile, ye fair!
In you the earth forgets her care.
In every land destruction’s wave
O’er buried plains triumphant rode:
Alas! even now an ark may save
Some wretch who flies the advancing flood.
But see! the rainbow shines above,
And toward them comes the peaceful dove—
Flow, generous wine—and smile, ye fair!
In you the earth forgets her care.
What means this field of burning death?
Proud Etna heaves, by fury riven,
And seems to hurl from depths beneath,
Hell’s weapons toward the kindling heaven.
Soon sink the flames below the plain—
The shaken world grows calm again.
Flow, generous wine—and smile, ye fair!
In you the earth forgets her care.
New griefs upon their path have sped—
The plague unfolds his wings of night,
Whose influence o’er the victim shed
Arrests in death his feeble flight.
Lo! health returns! serene the sky—
The doomed one feels a friend is nigh.
Flow, generous wine—and smile, ye fair!
The earth in you forgets her care.
War fills the cup of pain once more—
We meet the challenge monarchs gave;
The earth that drank the fathers’ gore
Has given the reckless sons a grave.
But tyrants weary of the steel,
And mourn the wounds they yet may heal.
Flow, generous wine—and smile, ye fair!
In you the earth forgets her care.
No more at Nature’s ills we’ll frown,
But welcome chant for smiling spring;
With roses from her wreath we crown
Our glowing temples while we sing.
Heedless of pallid slavery’s check,
Amid a crumbling empire’s wreck—
Flow, generous wine—and smile, ye fair!
In you the earth forgets her care.