La Nature.

How fruitful Nature to both joy and pain
Alike gives birth!
Dark plagues, with blood, tears, ruin, in their train,
Lay waste the earth
But Beauty still attracts us to her feet;
Still from the grape is pressed the nectar sweet:
Flow, generous wines — a smile, O Woman, deign —
And lo, the universe is glad again!

Each land hath had its deluge: ah! perchance,
Some ark still saves
Mortals, by day, by night, on whom advance
The threatening waves.
Soon as the Iris glitters o'er their bark,
Soon as the dove hath lighted on their ark,
Flow, generous wines — a smile, O Woman, deign —
And lo, the universe is glad again!

Another burial-ground! see Etna rise,
And fiercely swell;
He seems from forth his bowels to the skies
To vomit hell!
But, for a time, at length his rage is past;
On the racked world his looks are calmly cast:
Flow, generous wines — a smile, O Woman, deign —
And lo, the universe is glad again!

O God! fresh ills the Eastern vulture brings,
Ills that appal;
The Plague o'er men hath spread his deadly wings;
They fly — but fall
Heaven is appeased; her aid soft Pity lends;
The sick no more are banished from their friends:
Flow, generous wines — a smile, O Woman, deign —
And lo, the universe is glad again!

We pay for kingly strife, when War conspires
To crown our woes:
Earth drinks the sons' blood, though the blood of sires
Still o'er her flows
But man grows weary of destroying too,
And Nature's voice his passions can subdue:
Flow, generous wines — a smile, O Woman, deign —
And lo, the universe is glad again!

Then, far from blaming Nature, be it ours,
Chanting of Spring,
O'er Joy and Love, the perfume of her flowers
Gaily to fling!
Despite the horror that must slaves o'erwhelm,
Amid the ruins of a shattered realm,
Flow, generous wines — a smile, O Woman, deign —
And lo, the universe is glad again!