light.

Young waking May alone
Is fair as summer's night so still,
When from his locks the dews drop down,
And, rosy, he ascends the hill.

Ye noble souls and true,
Whose graves with sacred moss are strawn.
Blest were I, might I see with you
The glimmering night, the rosy dawn.

This is true lyric feeling, spontaneous, not forced. Many of his
odes, and parts of the _Messias_, shew great love for Nature. There
is a fine flight of imagination in _The Festival of Spring_:

Not into the ocean of all the worlds would I plunge--not hover
where the first created, the glad choirs of the sons of light,
adore, deeply adore and sunk in ecstasy. Only around the drop on
the bucket, only around the earth, would I hover and adore.
Hallelujah! hallelujah! the drop on the bucket flowed also out of
the hand of the Almighty.

When out of the hand of the Almighty the greater earth flowed,
when the streams of light rushed, and the seven stars began to
be--then flowedst thou, drop, out of the hand of the Almighty.

When a stream of light rushed, and our sun began to be, a
cataract of waves of light poured, as adown the rock a
storm-cloud, and girded Orion, then flowedst thou, drop, out of
the hand of the Almighty. Who are the thousandfold thousands, who
all the myriads that inhabit the drop?...

But thou, worm of Spring, which, greenly golden, art fluttering
beside me, thou livest and art, perhaps, ah! not immortal....

The storm winds that carry the thunder, how they roar, how with
loud waves they stream athwart the forest! Now they hush, slow
wanders the black cloud....

Ah! already rushes heaven and earth with the gracious rain; now
is the earth refreshed....

Behold Jehovah comes no longer in storm; in gentle pleasant
murmurs comes Jehovah, and under him bends the bow of peace.

In another ode, _The Worlds_, he calls the stars 'drops of the
ocean.'

Again, in _Death_ he shews the sense of his own nothingness, in
presence of the overpowering greatness of the Creator:

Ye starry hosts that glitter in the sky,
How ye exalt me! Trancing is the sight
Of all Thy glorious works, Most High.
How lofty art Thou in Thy wondrous might;
What joy to gaze upon these hosts, to one
Who feels himself so little, God so great,
Himself but dust, and the great God his own!
Oh, when I die, such rapture on me wait!