The World Beautiful

What the anvil? What dread grasp
Dare its deadly terrors clasp?

When the stars threw down their spears,
And watered heaven with their tears,
Did he smile his work to see?

Did he who made the lamb make thee?

Tiger, tiger, burning bright

In the forests of the night,
What immortal hand or eye

Dare frame thy fearful symmetry?

WILLIAM BLAKE.

The Spacious Firmament on High
The spacious firmament on high,
With all the blue ethereal sky,

And spangled heavens, a shining frame,
Their great Original proclaim.

The unwearied sun from day to day
Does his Creator's power display,
And publishes to every land
The work of an Almighty hand.

Soon as the evening shades prevail,
The moon takes up the wondrous tale,
And nightly to the listening earth

Repeats the story of her birth;

Whilst all the stars that round her burn,
And all the planets in their turn,

Confirm the tidings as they roll,
And spread the truth from pole to pole.

What though in solemn silence, all
Move round this dark, terrestrial ball?
What though nor real voice nor sound
Amidst their radiant orbs be found?
In Reason's ear they all rejoice,
And utter forth a glorious voice,
Forever singing as they shine:

"The hand that made us is divine!"

JOSEPH ADDISON.

The World Beautiful

Green Things Growing

"Oh, the fluttering and the pattering of those green things growing!

How they talk each to each, when none of us are knowing; "

"Every clod feels a stir of might,

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An instinct within it that reaches and towers, And groping blindly above it for light,

Climbs to a soul in grass and flowers;

Lean against a streamlet's rushy banks, And watch intently Nature's gentle doings;

They will be found softer than ringdoves' cooings."

"Dear, tell them, that if eyes were made for seeing,

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Then beauty is its own excuse for being."

They know the time to go!

The fairy clocks strike their inaudible hour

In field and woodland, and each punctual flower
Bows at the signal an obedient head
And hastes to bed."

"If so the sweetness of the wheat

Into my soul might pass,
And the clear courage of the grass."

"Flower in the crannied wall,

I pluck you out of the crannies;
Hold you here, root and all, in my hand,
Little flower-but if I could understand
What you are, root and all, and all in all,
I should know what God and man is.”