Thou liv'st with less ambitious aim, Yet hast not gone without thy fame; Thou art indeed by many a claim If to a rock from rains he fly, Near the green holly, And wearily at length should fare; He need but look about, and there Thou art!-a Friend at hand, to scare His melancholy. A hundred times, by rock or bower, Ere thus I have lain couched an hour, Have I derived from thy sweet power Some apprehension; Some steady love; some brief delight; Some memory that had taken flight; Some chime of fancy wrong or right; Or stray invention. An instinct call it, a blind sense; A happy, genial influence, Coming one knows not how nor whence, Child of the Year! that round dost run Thy course, bold lover of the sun, And cheerful when the day's begun As morning Leveret, *Thy long-lost praise thou shalt regain ; Dear shalt thou be to future men As in old time;-thou not in vain, Art Nature's Favorite. * See, in Chaucer and the elder Poets, the honours formerly paid to this flower. II. A WHIRL-BLAST from behind the hill Rushed o'er the wood with startling sound: Then-all at once the air was still, And showers of hailstones pattered round. Where leafless Oaks towered high above, I sat within an undergrove Of tallest hollies, tall and green; |