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To My Noble
Friend, Mr Charles Cotton
O thou that swing'st
upon the waving ear
Of some well-filled oaten beard,
Drunk ev'ry night with a delicious tear
Dropped thee
from heav'n, where now th' art reared,
The joys
of earth and air are thine entire,
That with thy feet
and wings dost hop and fly;
And, when the poppy
works, thou dost retire
To thy carved acorn-bed to
lie.
Up with the day, the sun thou welcom'st
then,
Sport'st in the gilt plats of his beams,
And
all these merry days mak'st merry men,
Thyself, and
melancholy streams.
But ah the sickle! -golden
ears are cropped;
Ceres and Bacchus bid good-night;
Sharp frosty fingers all your flow'rs have topped,
And what schythes spared, winds shave off quite.
Poor verdant fool! and now green ice! -thy joys,
Large and as lasting as thy perch of grass,
Bid us
lay in 'gainst winter rain, and poise
Their floods
with an o'erflowing glass.
Thou best of men and
friends! we will create
A genuine summer in each
other's breast;
And spite of this cold time and
frozen fate,
Thaw us a warm seat to our rest.
Our sacred hearths shall burn eternally
As vestal
flames; the North-wind, he
Shall strike his
frost-stretched wings, dissolve, and fly
This Etna in
epitome.
Dropping December shall come weeping in,
Bewail th' usurping of his reign;
But when in show'rs
of old Greek we begin,
Shall cry he hath his crown
again!
Night as clear Hesper shall our tapers
whip
From the light casements where we play,
And
the dark hag from her black mantle strip,
And stick
there everlasting day.
Thus richer than untempted
kings are we,
That asking nothing, nothing need:
Though lord of all that seas embrace, yet he
That
wants himself is poor indeed.
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