O D E ON THE S PR IN G. Lo! where the rofy-bosom❜d hours, Fair VENUS' train, appear, And wake the purple year! The Attic warbler pours her throat, The untaught harmony of spring: While, whifp'ring pleasure as they fly, Cool Zephyrs thro' the clear blue sky Their gather'd fragrance fling. Where-e'er the oak's thick branches stretch A broader browner fhade; Where-e'er the rude and mofs-grown beech O'er-canopies the glade * ; Befide fome water's rushy brink With me the Mufe fhall fit, and think, (At ease reclin'd in ruftic ftate), How vain the ardour of the crowd, How low, how little are the proud, How indigent the ! great a bank. O'er-canopied with luscious woodbine. Shakefp. Midf, Night's Dream. Still is the toiling hand of Care; The panting herds repose: Yet hark, how thro' the peopled air The infect youth are on the wing, And float amid the liquid noon * : fporting with quick glance, Shew to the fun their wav'd coats dropt with ged. Milton's Paradife Loft, book 7. To Contemplation's fober eye * Such is the race of man : And they that creep, and they that fly, Shall end where they began. Alike the bufy and the gay But flutter thro' life's little day, In Fortune's varying colours dreft: Brush'd by the hand of rough Mischance, Or chill'd by Age, their airy dance Methinks I hear, in accents low, The sportive kind reply; Poor Moralift! and what art thou? A folitary fly! * While infects from the threshold preach, &c. M. GREEN, in the Grotto. Dodley's Mifcellanies, Vol. 5. p. 161. Thy |