The summer is coming, on soft winds borne- Ye are mark'd by care, ye are mine no more: I go where the loved who have left you dwell, And the flowers are not Death's.-Fare ye well, farewell! SPENSER. YOUNG folk now flock in everywhere, Even this morning—no longer ago, I saw a shole of shepherds outgo, With singing, and shouting, and jolly cheer : Before them went a lusty tabourer, That unto many a hornpipe play'd, Whereto they danced, each one with his maid. EARL OF SURREY. THE sweet season that bud and bloome forth brings, With green hath clad the hill and eke the vale; The nightingale with feathers new she sings; The turtle to her mate hath told her tale. The hart hath hung his old head on the pale, The swift swallow pursues the fliès small, Winter is worn that was the flower's bale, And thus I see, among those pleasant things, Each care decays, and yet my sorrow springs. MILTON. ON MAY MORNING. Now the bright morning-star, day's harbinger, CLARE. THE snow has left the cottage-top; The thatch-moss grows in brighter green; And eaves in quick succession drop, Where grinning icicles have been, Pit-patting with a pleasant noise In tubs set by the cottage-door; While ducks and geese, with happy joys, Plunge in the yard-pond brimming o'er. The sun peeps through the window-pane, Which children mark with laughing eye, And in the wet streets steal again, To tell each other spring is nigh. Then as young Hope the past recalls, In playing groups they often draw, To build beside the sunny walls Their spring-time huts of sticks or straw. And oft in pleasure's dream they hie Where painted pooty shells abide; For leaves that come with budding spring, And wondering, in their search for play, Why birds delay to build and sing. The mavis thrush, with wild delight, Upon the orchard's dripping tree Mutters, to see the day so bright, Fragments of young Hope's poesy; And Dame oft stops her buzzing wheel, To hear the robin's note once more, Who tootles while he pecks his meal From sweet-briar hips beside the door. JOHN CUNNINGHAM. DAY: A PASTORAL. IN the barn the tenant cock, Philomel forsakes the thorn, From the low-roof'd cottage ridge, Now the pine-tree's waving top Gently greets the morning gale! Kidlings, now, begin to crop Daisies, in the dewy dale. From the balmy sweets, uncloy'd, Trickling through the creviced rock, Sweet refreshment waits the flock Colin, for the promised corn (Ere the harvest hopes are ripe) Anxious, hears the huntsman's horn, Boldly sounding, drown his pipe. Sweet, O sweet, the warbling throng, On the white emblossom'd spray! Nature's universal song Echoes to the rising day. |