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?...