Or the near grasshopper's incessant note, From the lov'd harvest feast returning home, If haply notic'd by the musing mind, If not abroad I sit, but sip at home By some fair hand, or ere it reach the lip, As from the window studious looks mine eye, Wend slowly from the pasture to the pail Let the glad ox, unyok'd, make haste to field, And the stout wain-horse, of encumbrance stript, Shake his enormous limbs with blund'ring speed, Eager to gratify his famish'd lip With taste of herbage and the meadow-brook. THE gorse is yellow on the heath, The panks with speedwell flowers are gay, The oaks are budding; and beneath, The hawthorn soon will bear the wreath, The welcome guest of settled Spring, Come, Summer visitant, attach To my reed-roof your nest of clay, And let my ear your music catch, Low twittering underneath the thatch, At the grey dawn of day. As fables tell, an Indian sage, I wish I did his power possess, That I might learn, fleet bird, from thee, What our vain systems only guess, And know from what wild wilderness I would a little while restrain Your rapid wing, that I might hear Whether on clouds that bring the rain You sail'd above the western main, The wind your charioteer. In Afric, does the sultry gale, Through spicy bower, and palmy grove, Bear the repeated Cuckoo's tale? Dwells there a time the wandering Rail, Were you in Asia? O relate, If there your fabled sister's woes I would inquire how, journeying long But if, as cooler breezes blow, Prophetic of the waning year, You hide, though none know when or how In the cliff's excavated brow, And linger torpid here; Thus lost to life, what favouring dream And tells, that dancing in the beam, The May-fly on the lake? |