| |
| LO! where the rosy-bosom’d Hours, | |
| Fair Venus’ train, appear, | |
| Disclose the long-expecting flowers | |
| And wake the purple year! | |
| The Attic warbler pours her throat | 5 |
| Responsive to the cuckoo’s note, | |
| The untaught harmony of Spring: | |
| While, whispering pleasure as they fly, | |
| Cool Zephyrs thro’ the clear blue sky | |
| Their gather’d fragrance fling. | 10 |
| |
| Where’er the oak’s thick branches stretch | |
| A broader, browner shade, | |
| Where’er the rude and moss-grown beech | |
| O’er-canopies the glade, | |
| Beside some water’s rushy brink | 15 |
| With me the Muse shall sit, and think | |
| (At ease reclined in rustic state) | |
| How vain the ardour of the Crowd, | |
| How low, how little are the Proud, | |
| How indigent the Great! | 20 |
| |
| Still is the toiling hand of Care; | |
| The panting herds repose: | |
| Yet hark, how thro’ the peopled air | |
| The busy murmur glows! | |
| The insect youth are on the wing, | 25 |
| Eager to taste the honied spring | |
| And float amid the liquid noon: | |
| Some lightly o’er the current skim, | |
| Some show their gaily-gilded trim | |
| Quick-glancing to the sun. | 30 |
| |
| To Contemplation’s sober eye | |
| Such is the race of Man: | |
| And they that creep, and they that fly | |
| Shall end where they began. | |
| Alike the busy and the gay | 35 |
| But flutter thro’ life’s little day, | |
| In Fortune’s varying colours drest: | |
| Brush’d by the hand of rough Mischance, | |
| Or chill’d by Age, their airy dance | |
| They leave, in dust to rest. | 40 |
| |
| Methinks I hear in accents low | |
| The sportive kind reply: | |
| Poor moralist! and what art thou? | |
| A solitary fly! | |
| Thy joys no glittering female meets, | 45 |
| No hive hast thou of hoarded sweets, | |
| No painted plumage to display: | |
| On hasty wings thy youth is flown; | |
| Thy sun is set, thy spring is gone— | |
| We frolic while ’tis May. | 50 |
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