Lo! down the slope of yonder meads,

His fleecy care the shepherd leads

And, echoing from the neighb’ring hill,

Is heard his pipe's melodious trill ;
While bleating lambkins join the sound,
Playing their harmless gambols round.
But tell me, breezes, whence ye bear
This balmy sweetness through the air ?

Behind that fence of hawthorn-bloom

Does Flora breathe the rich perfume ?

The flow'ry tribes in order gay

There ope their beauties to the day:

From whence full oft the rustic Fair

Her bosom decks, or braids her hair;

Whene'er the village-train with glee
Hail the Vernal jubilee.

ON

And drear December call thee here again.

Enough hath Albion's drooping ifle

Felt of thy destructive blast;
Ere this the fondly thought thy fury past,
And rais’d her head with many an op’ning smile.

II.

Freed from thy tyrannic chain,
Nature expanded all her blooming store,

Gladsome to find her pow'r again :
On ev'ry spray a bud was seen,
In ev'ry bud an infant flow'r
Pept through its vest of liveliest green:

On

On many a branch the feather'd throng

Woo'd the sweet Spring with happy song, Of future nuptials, and the chirping nest,

Piping his rural notes, the shepherd fate,
While his young lambs the tender herbage crop,

And adown the mountain's fide

The soft stream cours’d with purling tide ;

And the folemn murm'ring breeze,

Rustling through the waving trees,

Render'd the rural harmony complete.

Along the dew-bespangled vale,
Blithsome with her Aowing pail,

The milkmaid sung her matin strain,
Whilst, whistling o'er his teeming ground,

The

The ploughman thought his labour crown’d,
And gladsome view’d the rising grain.

IV.

Oh! hadst thou spar'd this blissful scene,
Happy, thrice happy had they been.

But, envious of these joys,

Enrag'd, thou bad’st thy tempests rise,

And shed their snowy fury round,

And smite the pregnant ground.

Lo! the blafted blossoms fall,

The frost-nipt buds decay,
The feather's choir forget their amorous lay,

And mourn in silent fadness all.

V.

Forc'd from the mountain's head, now wrapt with snow,

The shepherd seeks his warmer cot ;

His lambkins, crowding in the folds below,
With piteous bleating mourn their changed lot.

No