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, Gave to each touching charm a more attractive grace. Or the near grasshopper's incessant note, Such rural sounds, If haply notic'd by the musing mind, 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, The Swallow, too, is come at last; 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? |