Thou, Scythian-like, dost round thy lands above
The sun’s gilt tent for ever move;
And still as thou in pomp dost go,
The shining pageants of the world attend thy show.
Nor amidst all these triumphs dost thou scorn
The humble glow-worms to adorn,
And with those living spangles gild
(O, greatness without pride!) the lilies of the field.
Night and her ugly subjects thou dost fright,
And sleep, the lazy owl of night;
Ashamed and fearful to appear,
They screen their horrid shapes with the black hemisphere.
With them there hastes, and wildly takes the alarm
Of painted dreams a busy swarm.
At the first opening of thine eye
The various clusters break, the antic atoms fly.
The guilty serpents and obscener beasts
Creep, conscious, to their secret rests;
Nature to thee does reverence pay,
Ill omens and ill sights remove out of thy way.
At thy appearance, Grief itself is said
To shake his wings and rouse his head:
And cloudy Care has often took
A gentle beamy smile, reflected from thy look.
At thy appearance, Fear itself grows bold;
Thy sunshine melts away his cold.
Encouraged at the sight of thee,
To the cheek colour comes, and firmness to the knee.
Even Lust, the master of a hardened face,
Blushes, if thou be’st in the place,
To darkness’ curtain he retires,
In sympathising night he rolls his smoky fires.
When, goddess, thou lift’st up thy wakened head
Out of the morning’s purple bed,
Thy quire of birds about thee play,
And all thy joyful world salutes the rising day.
The ghosts and monster-spirits that did presume
A body’s privilege to assume,
Vanish again invisibly,
And bodies gain again their visibility.