And, am I right or am I wrong, The prelude to some brighter world. 4. For since the time when Adam first And every bird of Eden burst In carol, every bud to flower, What eyes, like thine, have waken'd hopes ? Yet sleeps a dreamless sleep to me; That lets thee neither hear nor see: Are clasp'd the moral of thy life, And that for which I care to live. EPILOGUE. So, Lady Flora, take my lay, And, if you find a meaning there, To shape the song for your delight That float thro' Heaven, and cannot light? Or old-world trains, upheld at court By Cupid-boys of blooming hueBut take it earnest wed with sport, And either sacred unto you. AMPHION. My father left a park to me, A garden too with scarce a tree Yet say the neighbours when they call, And in it is the germ of all That grows within the woodland. O had I lived when song was great Nor cared for seed or scion ! And had I lived when song was great, 'Tis said he had a tuneful tongue, Such happy intonation, Wherever he sat down and sung He left a small plantation; Wherever in a lonely grove He set up his forlorn pipes, The gouty oak began to move, And flounder into hornpipes. The mountain stirr'd its bushy crown, The linden broke her ranks and rent The woodbine wreaths that bind her, And down the middle buzz! she went With all her bees behind her: The poplars, in long order due, The shock-head willows two and two By rivers gallopaded. Came wet-shot alder from the wave, Came yews, a dismal coterie ; Each pluck'd his one foot from the grave, Old elms came breaking from the vine, And wasn't it a sight to see, When, ere his song was ended, And shepherds from the mountain-eaves Look'd down, half-pleased, half-frighten'd, As dash'd about the drunken leaves Oh, nature first was fresh to men, So youthful and so flexile then, You moved her at your pleasure. Twang out, my fiddle! shake the twigs! And make her dance attendance; Blow, flute, and stir the stiff-set sprigs, And scirrhous roots and tendons. |