"Herds and flocks
Drop the dry sprig, and, mute-imploring, eye
The falling verdure."

The verdure is seen in the shower--to be the very shower--by the poet at
least--perhaps by the cattle, in their thirsty hunger forgetful of the
brown ground, and swallowing the dropping herbage. The birds had not
been so sorely distressed by the drought as the beasts, and therefore
the poet speaks of them, not as relieved from misery, but as visited
with gladness--

"Hush'd in short suspense,
The plumy people streak their wings with oil,
To throw the lucid moisture trickling off,
And wait th' approaching sign, to strike, at once,
Into the general choir."

Then, and not till then, the _humane_ poet bethinks him of the insensate
earth--insensate not; for beast and bird being satisfied, and lowing and
singing in their gratitude, so do the places of their habitation yearn
for the blessing--

"E'en mountains, vales,
And forests, seem impatient, to demand
The promised sweetness."

The _religious_ Poet then speaks for his kind--and says devoutly--

"Man superior walks
Amid the glad creation, musing praise,
And looking lively gratitude."

In that mood he is justified to feast his fancy with images of the
beauty as well as the bounty of nature; and genius in one line has
concentrated them all--

"Beholds the kindling country colour round."

'Tis "an a' day's rain"--and "the well-showered earth is deep-enriched
with vegetable life." And what kind of an evening? We have seen many
such--and every succeeding one more beautiful, more glorious to our eyes
than another--because of these words in which the beauty and the glory
of one and all are enshrined--

"Till, in the western sky, the downward sun
Looks out, effulgent, from amid the flush
Of broken clouds, gay-shifting to his beam.
The rapid radiance, instantaneous, strikes
Th' illumined mountain, through the forest streams,
Shakes on the floods, and in a yellow mist,
Far smoking o'er th' interminable plain,
In twinkling myriads lights the dewy gems.
Moist, bright, and green, the landscape laughs around.
Full swell the woods; their every music wakes,
Mix'd in wild concert with the warbling brooks
Increased, the distant bleatings of the hills,
And hollow lows responsive from the vales,
Whence, blending all, the sweeten'd zephyr springs.