42

ODE ON SPRING

ODE ON SPRING.

Lo! where the rosy-bosomed Hours,
Fair Venus' train, appear,
Disclose the long-expecting flowers,
And wake the purple year!
The Attic warbler pours her throat,
Responsive to the cuckoo's note,

The untaught harmony of spring:
While, whispering pleasure as they fly,
Cool Zephyrs through the clear blue sky
Their gathered fragrance fling.

Where'er the oak's thick branches stretch

A broader, browner shade,

Where'er the rude and moss-grown beech

O'ercanopies the glade,

Beside some water's rushy brink

With me the Muse shall sit, and think

(At ease reclined in rustic state)

How vain the ardor of the crowd,
How low, how little are the proud,

How indigent the great!

La! where the rosy-bosomed Hours,
Fair Venus train, appear;

M. Goffin.

ODE ON SPRING.

Still is the toiling hand of Care;

The panting herds repose:

Yet, hark, how through the peopled air
The busy murmur glows!

The insect-youth are on the wing,
Eager to taste the honeyed spring,
And float amid the liquid noon:
Some lightly o'er the current skim,
Some show their gayly-gilded trim
Quick-glancing to the sun.

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

But flutter through life's little day,

In Fortune's varying colors drest :

Brushed by the hand of rough Mischance,
Or chilled by Age, their airy dance
They leave, in dust to rest.

Methinks I hear, in accents low,
The sportive kind reply:

43

44

MAY.

Poor moralist! and what art thou?

A solitary fly!

Thy joys no glittering female meets,
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.

GRAY.

MAY.

How shall I meet thee, Summer, wont to fill
My heart with gladness, when thy pleasant tide
First came, and on each coomb's romantic side

Was heard the distant cuckoo's hollow bill?

Fresh flowers shall fringe the wild brink of the stream,

As with the song of joyance and of hope

The hedge-rows shall ring loud, and on the slope

The poplars sparkle on the transient beam,
The shrubs and laurels which I love to tend,

Thinking their May-tide fragrance might delight,