Or with mild rapture stooped devoutly o’er
His small coarse leaf, alive with curious lore;
Tales of grim judges, at whose awful beck
Flashed the broad blade across a royal neck,
Or learned dreams of Israel’s long lost child
Found in the wanderer of the western wild.
The revival of nature at the approach of spring has been often described by poets, but the following passage prints the scenes fresh and bright on the heart and imagination, as if it had never before found its painter. The reader cannot fail to notice the nice propriety of the descriptive epithets, and the combination of the naturalist’s minute observation with the poet’s suggestive imagination, in the whole representation:
Winter is past; the heart of Nature warms
Beneath the wrecks of unresisted storms;
Doubtful at first, suspected more than seen,