Day's monarch comes to bless the year,
Wing'd zephyrs wanton round his car,
Along th' aethereal road;
Plenty and Health attend his beams,
And Truth, divinely bright, proclaims
The visit of the God.
Aw'd by the view, my soul reveres
The Great FIRST CAUSE that bade the spheres
In tuneful order move;
Thine is the sable-mantled Night,
Unseen Almighty! and the Light
The radiance of thy love.
Hark! the awaken'd grove repays
With melody the genial rays,
And Echo spreads the strain;
The streams in grateful murmurs run,
The bleating flocks salute the sun,
And music glads the plain.
While Nature thus her charms displays,
Let me enjoy the fragrant breeze
The opening flowers diffuse;
Temp'rance and Innocence attend,
These are your haunts, your influence lend,
Associates of the Muse!
Riot, and Guilt, and wasting Care,
And fell Revenge, and black Despair,
Avoid the Morning's light:
Nor beams the sun, nor blooms the rose,
Their restless passions to compose,
Who Virtue's dictates flight.
Along the mead, and in the wood,
And on the margin of the flood
The Goddess walks confest:
She gives the landscape power to charm,
The sun his genial heat to warm
The wise and generous breast.
Happy the man! whose tranquil mind
Sees Nature in her changes kind,
And pleas'd the whole surveys;
For him the morn benignly smiles,
And evening shades reward the toils
That measure out his days.
The varying year may shift the scene,
The sounding tempest lash the main,
And Heaven's own thunders roll;
Calmly he views the bursting storm,
Tempests nor thunder can deform
The morning of his soul.
BY SAMUEL JOHNSON, LL. D.
EVENING now, from purple wings,
Sheds the grateful gifts she brings;
Brilliant drops bedeck the mead,.
Cooling breezes shake the reed;
Shake the reed, and curl the stream
Silver'd o'er with Cynthia's beam;
Near the chequer'd, lonely grove,
Hears and keeps thy secrets, Love.
STELLA, thither let us stray!
Lightly o'er the dewy way,
Phoebus drives his burning car,
Hence, my lovely STELLA, far;
In his stead, the Queen of night
Round us pours a lambent light;
Light, that serves but just to shew
Breasts that beat, and cheeks that glow;
in whisper'd joy,
Evening's silent hours employ,
Silence best and conscious shades
Please the hearts that Love invades ; Other pleasures give them pain, Lovers all but Love disdain.
HAIL meek-ey'd Maiden, clad in sober grey,
Whose soft approach the wary woodman loves,
As homeward bent to kiss his prattling babes,
He jocund whistles thro' the twilight groves.
When Phoebus sinks behind the gilded hills,
You lightly o'er the misty meadows walk,
The drooping daisies bathe in dulcet dews,
And nurse the nodding vi'let's tender 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 Sylvan too returns, and laughing Pan.
To the deep wood the clamorous rooks repair, Light skims the swallow o'er the wat❜ry scene, And from the sheep-cotes, and fresh-furrow'd field, Stout plowmen meet to wrestle on the green. Vol. XIV.
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