To hear the lark begin his flight,
And finging startle the dull night,
From his watch-tower in the skies,
Till the dappled dawn doth rise;
Then to come in spite of forrow,
And at my window bid good-morrow,
Through the sweet-briar, or the vine,
Or the twisted eglantine:
While the cock with lively din
Scatters the rear of darkness thin,
And to the stack, or the barn-door,
Stoutly struts his dames before;
Oft lift'ning how the hounds and horn
Cheerly rouse the slumb'ring morn,
From the fide of fome hoar hill,
Through the high wood echoing shrill:
Some time walking not unseen
By hedge-row elms, on hillocks green,,
Right againft the eastern gate,
Where the great fun begins his state,
Rob'd in flames, and amber light,
The clouds in thousand liveries dight;
While the plowman near at hand
Whistles o'er the furrow'd land,
And the milk-maid fingeth blithe,.
And the mower whets his scythe,
And every shepherd tells his tale:
Under the hawthorn in the dale..
Strait mine eye hath caught new pleasures
Whilft the landscape round it measures,
Ruffet lawns, and fallows gray,
Where the nibbling flocks do stray;
Mountains on whose barren breaft
The lab'ring clouds do often reft;
Meadows trim with daifies pied,
Shallow brooks, and rivers wide.
Towers and battlements it fees
Bofom'd high in tufted trees,
Where perhaps some beauty lies,
The Cynofure of neighb'ring eyes.
Hard by a cottage chimney smokes,
From betwixt two aged oaks,
Where Corydon and Thyrfis met,
Are at their favory dinner set
Of herbs, and other country messes,
Which the neat-handed Phyllis dresses;
And then in hafte her bow'r she leaves,
With Thestylis to bind the sheaves;
Or if the earlier season lead
To the tann'd haycock in the mead.
Sometimes with secure delight
The upland hamlets will invite,
When the merry bells ring round,
And the jocund rebecs found
To many a youth, and many a maid,
Dancing in the chequer'd shade:
And young and old come forth to play
On a funshine holy-day,
Till the live-long daylight fail;
Then to the spicy nut-brown ale,
With stories told of many a feat,
How fairy Mab the junkets ate,
She was pinch'd, and pull'd she said,
And he by friars lanthorn led.
Tells how the drudging goblin sweat,
To earn his cream-bowl duly fet,
When in one night, ere glimpse of morn,
His shadowy flail hath thresh'd the corn
That ten day-lab'rers could not end;
Then lies him down, the lubber fiend,
And stretch'd out all the chimney's length,
Bafks at the fire his hairy strength,
And crop-full out of doors he flings,
Ere the first cock his matin rings.
Thus done the tales, to bed they creep,
By whisp'ring winds foon lull'd asleep..
Towered cities please us then,
And the busy hum of men;
Where throngs of knights and barons bold
In weeds of peace high triumphs hold;
With store of ladies, whose bright eyes
Rain influence, and judge the prize
Of wit, or arms, while both contend
To win her grace, whom all commend.
There let Hymen oft appear
In faffron robe, with taper clear,
And pomp, and feaft, and revelry,
With mask, and antique pageantry;
Such fights as youthful poets dream
On fummer eves by haunted stream.
Then to the well-trod stage anon,
If Johnfon's learned fock be on,
Or fweetest Shakespeare, fancy's child,
Warble his native wood-notes wild..
And ever against eating cares,
Lap me in foft Lydian airs,
Married to immortal verse,
Such as the meeting foul may pierce
In notes, with many a winding bout
Of linked sweetness long drawn out,
With wanton heed, and giddy cunning,
The melting voice through mazes running,
Untwifting all the chains that tie
The hidden foul of harmony;
That Orpheus' felf may heave his head
From golden slumber on a bed
Of heap'd Elysian flowers, and hear
Such strains as would have won the ear
Of Pluto, to have quite fet free
His half regain'd Eurydice.
These delights, if thou canst give,
Mirth, with thee I mean to live.
HENCE vain deluding joys,
The brood of folly without father bred,
How little you bested,
Or fill the fixed mind with all your toys?
Dwell in some idle brain,
And fancies fond with gaudy shapes possess,
As thick and numberless
As the gay motes that people the funbeams, Or likest hovering dreams
The fickle penfioners of Morpheus' train.
But hail, thou goddess, sage and holy!
Hail, divinest Melancholy!
Whose faintly visage is too bright
To hit the sense of human fight,
And therefore to our weaker view
O'erlaid with black, staid wifdom's hue;
Black, but fuch as in esteem
Prince Memnon's fister might beseem:
Or that starr'd Ethiop queen that strove
To fet her beauties' praise above
The fea-nymyhs, and their powers offended:
Yet thou art higher far descended,
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