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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, whisp'ring pleasure as they fly,
Cool Zephyrs thro' 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'er-canopies 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 ardour of the Crowd,
How low,
how little are the Proud,
How indigent the Great!
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 honied 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 thro' life's
little day,
In Fortune's varying colours 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:
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.
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