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ODE ON THE SPRING,

TO A LADY.

[IBID.]

Lo! Spring array'd in primrose-colour'd robe, Fresh beauties sheds on each enliven'd scene, With show'rs and sunshine cheers the smiling globe, And mantles hill and vale in glowing green.

All nature feels her vital heat around,

The pregnant glebe now bursts with foodful grain, With kindly warmth she opes the frozen ground, And with new life informs the teeming plain.

She calls the fishes from their oozy beds,
And animates the deep with genial love,
She bids the herds bound sportive o'er the mead,
And with glad songs awakes the joyous grove.

No more the glaring tiger roams for prey,
All-powerful Love subdues his savage soul,
To find his spotted mate he darts away,

While gentler thoughts the thirst of blood control.

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But ah! while all is warmth and soft desire,

While all around Spring's cheerful influence own, You feel not, Amoret, her quickening fire, To Spring's kind heat, of all a foe alone.

ODE TO EVENING.

[IBID.]

HAIL meek-ey'd maiden, clad in sober gray, Whose soft approach the weary woodman loves, As homeward bent to kiss his prattling babes, Jocund he whistles through the twilight groves.

When Phoebus sinks behind the gilded hills,
You lightly o'er the misty meadows walk;
The drooping daisies bathe in honey dews,
And nurse the nodding violet's slender stalk.

The panting dryads, that in day's fierce heat,
To inmost bowers, and cooling caverns ran,
Return to trip in wanton evening-dance;

Old Silvan too returns, and laughing Pan.

To the deep wood the clamorous rooks repair,

Light skims the swallow o'er the watery scene; And from the sheep-cote, and fresh-furrow'd field, Stout ploughmen meet, to wrestle on the Green.

The swain, that artless sings on yonder rock,

His supping sheep, and lengthening shadow spies; Pleas'd with the cool, the calm, refreshful hour, And with hoarse humming of unnumber'd flies.

Now every passion sleeps: desponding Love,
And pining Envy, ever-restless pride:
An holy calm creeps o'er my peaceful soul,
Anger, and mad Ambition's storms subside.

O modest Evening! oft let me appear

A wandering votary in thy pensive train ; Listening to every wildly-warbling throat

That fills with farewell sweet thy darkening plain.

THE HAMLET.

WRITTEN IN WHICHWOOD FOREST.

[T. WARTON.]

THE hinds how blest, who ne'er beguil'd
To quit their hamlet's hawthorn wild,
Nor haunt the crowd, nor tempt the main,
For splendid care, and guilty gain!
When morning's twilight-tinctur'd beam
Strikes their low thatch with slanting gleam,
They rove abroad in ether blue,
To dip the scythe in fragrant dew;
The sheaf to bind, the beech to fell,
That nodding shades a craggy dell.

Midst gloomy glades, in warbles clear, Wild nature's sweetest notes they hear: untrodden banks they view

On

green

The hyacinth's neglected hue :

In their lone haunts, and woodland rounds,

They spy the squirrel's airy bounds:

And startle from her ashen spray,
Across the glen, the screaming jay:
Each native charm their steps explore
Of Solitude's sequester'd store.

For them the moon with cloudless ray Mounts, to illume their homeward way: Their weary spirits to relieve,

The meadows incense breathe at eve.
No riot mars the simple fare,

That o'er a glimmering hearth they share:
But when the curfeu's measur'd roar
Duly, the darkening vallies o'er,

Has echoed from the distant town,
They wish no beds of cygnet-down,
No trophied canopies, to close
Their drooping eyes in quick repose.

Their little sons, who spread the bloom Of health around the clay-built room, Or through the primros'd coppice stray, Or gambol in the new-mown hay; Or quaintly braid the cowslip-twine, Or drive afield the tardy kine; Or hasten from the sultry hill, To loiter at the shady rill;

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