| |
| ALL hail, vernal Phœbus! all hail, ye soft breezes! | |
| Announcing the visit of spring; | |
| How green are the meadows! the air how it pleases! | |
| How gleefully all the birds sing! | |
| |
| Begone, ye rude tempests, nor trouble the ether, | 5 |
| Nor let blushing Flora complain, | |
| While her pencil was tinging the tulip, bad weather | |
| Had blasted the promising gem. | |
| |
| From its verdant unfoldings the timid narcissus | |
| Now shoots out a diffident bud; | 10 |
| Begone ye rude tempests, for sure as it freezes | |
| Ye kill this bright child of the wood: | |
| |
| And peace gives new charms to the bright beaming season; | |
| The groves we now safely explore, | |
| Where murdering banditti, the dark sons of treason, | 15 |
| Were shelter’d and awed as before. | |
| |
| The swain with his oxen proceeds to the valley, | |
| Whose seven years sabbath concludes, | |
| And blesses kind heaven, that Britain’s black ally | |
| Is chased to Canadia’s deep woods. | 20 |
| |
| And Echo no longer is plaintively mourning, | |
| But laughs and is jocund as we; | |
| And the turtle-eyed nymphs, to their cots all returning, | |
| Carve “Washington,” on every tree. | |
| |
| I ’ll wander along by the side of yon fountain, | 25 |
| And drop in its current the line, | |
| To capture the glittering fish that there wanton; | |
| Ah, no! ’t is an evil design. | |
| |
| Sport on, little fishes, your lives are a treasure | |
| Which I can destroy, but not give; | 30 |
| Methinks it ’s at best a malevolent pleasure | |
| To bid a poor being not live. | |
| |
| How lucid the water! its soft undulations | |
| Are changeably ting’d by the light; | |
| It reflects the green banks, and by fair imitations | 35 |
| Presents a new heaven to sight. | |
| |
| The butterfly skims o’er its surface, all gilded | |
| With plumage just dipp’d in rich dies; | |
| But yon infant has seized the poor insect, ah! yield it; | |
| There, see the freed bird how it flies! | 40 |
| |
| But whither am I and my little dog straying? | |
| Too far from our cottage we roam; | |
| The dews are already exhaled; cease your playing, | |
| Come, Daphne, come let us go home. | |
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