The sabbaths of Eternity, One sabbath deep and wideA light upon the shining sea The Bridegroom with his bride! AMPHION My father left a park to me, But it is wild and barren, A garden too with scarce a trec Yet say the neighbours when they call, That grows within the woodland. O had I lived when song was great, And ta'en my fiddle to the gate, Nor cared for seed or scion ! And had I lived when song was great, And legs of trees were limber, And ta'en my fiddle to the gate, And fiddled in the timber! 'Tis said he had a tuneful tongue, Such happy intonation, Wherever he sat down and sung He left a small plantation; Wherever in a lonely grove He set up his forlorn pipes, The gouty oak began to move, And flounder into hornpipes. The mountain stirr'd its bushy crown, The linden broke her ranks and rent With all her bees behind her: The poplars in long order due, With cypress promenaded, The shock-head willows two and two Came wet-shot alder from the wave, Each pluck'd his one foot from the grave, Old elms came breaking from the vine, And, sweating rosin, plump'd the pine 314 And wasn't it a sight to see, And shepherds from the mountain-caves As dash'd about the drunken leaves Oh, nature first was fresh to men, So youthful and so flexile then, You moved her at your pleasure. Twang out, my fiddle! shake the twigs! And make her dance attendance; Blow, flute, and stir the stiff-set sprigs, And scirrhous roots and tendons. 'Tis vain! in such a brassy age But what is that I hear? a sound O Lord! 'tis in my neighbour's ground, They read Botanic Treatises, And Works on Gardening thro' there, And Methods of transplanting trees, To look as if they grew there. The wither'd Misses: how they prose But these, tho' fed with careful dirt, That blows upon its mountain, And I must work thro' months of toil, To grow my own plantation. |