But, ah! too soon, with pity's tender pain, The soft Serena, as this curse she hears, "For this soft tribe they heaviest fear dismiss, Have form'd the changing tissue of their doom; No power can tear the twisted threads apart; She spoke; and, ere Serena could reply, The vapour vanish'd from the lucid sky, The nymphs revive, the shadowy fiends are fled, Departed sorrow's faint and fainter trace Gave to each touching charm a more attractive grace. Or the near grasshopper's incessant note, From the lov'd harvest feast returning home, Such rural sounds, If haply notic'd by the musing mind, Sweet interruption yield, and thrice improve 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, With taste of herbage and the meadow-brook. THE gorse is yellow on the heath, The banks 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 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, Or the itinerant Dove? |