| |
| LO! where the rosy-bosomed Hours, | |
| Fair Venus’ train, appear, | |
| And wake the purple year! | |
| The Attic warbler pours her throat | |
| Responsive to the cuckoo’s note, | 5 |
| 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 | 10 |
| 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 | 15 |
| (At ease reclined in rustic state) | |
| How vain the ardor of the crowd, | |
| How low, how little are the proud, | |
| How indigent the great! | |
| |
| Still is the toiling hand of care; | 20 |
| 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 | 25 |
| 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 | 30 |
| 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, | 35 |
| 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 | 40 |
| The sportive kind reply: | |
| Poor moralist! and what art thou? | |
| A solitary fly! | |
| Thy joys no glittering female meets, | |
| No hive hast thou of hoarded sweets, | 45 |
| No painted plumage to display; | |
| On hasty wings thy youth is flown; | |
| Thy sun is set, thy spring is gone,— | |
| We frolic while ’t is May. | |
| |
