O D E

ON THE

S PR IN G.

Lo! where the rofy-bosom❜d hours,

Fair VENUS' train, appear,
Disclose the long-expecting flowers,

And wake the purple year!

The Attic warbler pours her throat,
Refponfive to the cuckow's note,

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 bufy murmur glows!

The infect youth are on the wing,
Eager to taste the honied spring,

And float amid the liquid noon * :
Some lightly o'er the currènt fkim,
Some shew their gayly-gilded trim
Quick-glancing to the fun,

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
They leave in duft to reft.

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

Thy joys no glittʼring female meets,
No hive haft thou of hoarded fweets,`
No painted plumage to display :
On hafty wings thy youth is flown;
Thy fun is fet, thy fpring is gone-
We frolic while 'tis May.