The Attic warbler pours her throat, The untaught harmony of Spring: Where'er the oak's thick branches ftretch A broader, browner fhade; Where'er the rude and mofs-grown beech O'er-canopies the glade *: Befide fome water's rufhy brink With me the Mufe fhall fit, and think (At a bank O'ercanopy'd with lufcious woodbine. Shakefp. Midf. Night's Dream. (At ease reclin'd in ruftic ftate) How vain the ardour of the Crowd, How low, how little are the Proud, How indigent the Great! Still is the toiling hand of Care: The panting herds repose: Yet hark, how thro' the peopled air The infect youth are on the wing, Eager to taste the honied fpring, And float amid the liquid noon* : Some lightly o'er the current skim, Some fhew their gayly-gilded trim Quick-glancing to the fun t. To Contemplation's fober eye' * Such is the race of Man : And they that creep, and they that fly, Shall end where they began. Alike the Bufy and the Gay But flutter thro' life's little day, In Fortune's varying colours dreft: Brush'd by the hand of rough Mifchance, They leave, in dust to rest. Methinks I hear, in accents low, The sportive kind reply: Poor moralift! and what art thou? A folitary fly! Thy * While infects from the threshold preach, &c. M. GREEN, in the Grotto. Dodfley's Mifcellanies, [Lond. Edit.] Vol. V. p. 861. |