The Eagle.-The Hare.
Grace said, we dance awhile,
And so the time beguile:
And if the moon doth hide her head
The glow-worm lights us home to bed.
O'er tops of dewy grass
So nimbly do we pass,
The young and tender stalk
Ne'er bends where we do walk;
Yet in the morning may be seen
Where we the night before have been.
SWIFTER than lightning downward tending,
An eagle stoop'd of mighty size,
On purple wings descending;
Like gold his beak, like stars shone forth his eyes, His silver breast with snow contending vies.
So have I seen some fearful hare maintain
A course, till tir'd before the dog she lay;
Who stretch'd behind her, pants upon the plain, Past power to kill, as she to get away:
With his loll'd tongue he faintly licks his prey; His warm breath blows her fur up as she lies; She trembling creeps upon the ground away, And looks back on him with beseeching eyes.
As o'er the hollow vaults we walk,
A hundred echoes round us talk,
From hill to hill the voice is tost:
Rocks rebounding,
Caves resounding,
Not a single word is lost.
THE florist, when the winter's rage is o'er,
When frosts and snows and tempests are no
To the kind soil commits the future flower:
Now genial heats unbind the teeming root,
Swell it with life, and make the fibres shoot:
He sees the rising vegetable rear
The tender stalk, and trust itself in air:
Now western gales breathe thro' the vernal sky,
Unfold the bud, and show its various dye:
Secure he views his labour with delight;
When, unexpected, in one piercing night
His promis'd joys are curs'd by a disastrous
blight.
WHO in the stupid ostrich has subdued
A parent's care, and fond inquietude?
While far she flies, her scatter'd eggs are found,
Without an owner, on the sandy ground;
Cast out on fortune, they at mercy lie,
And borrow life from an indulgent sky:
Adopted by the sun in blaze of day,
They ripen under his prolific ray.
The Peacock.-The Wild Ass.
Unmindful she, that some unhappy tread
May crush her young in their neglected bed,
What time she skims along the field with speed,
And scorns the rider and pursuing steed.
How rich the peacock! what bright glories run
From plume to plume, and vary in the sun!
He proudly spreads them to the golden ray,
Gives all his colours, and adorns the day;
With conscious state the spacious round displays,
And slowly moves amid the waving blaze.
DID man from service the wild ass discharge,
And break his bonds, and bid him live at large;
Thro' the wild waste, his ample mansion, roam,
And lose himself in his unbounded home?
By nature's, hand magnificently fed,
His meal is on the range of mountains spread;
As in pure air aloft he bounds along,
He sees in distant smoke the city throng;
Conscious of freedom scorns the smother'd train, The threat'ning driver and the servile rein.
FIERCEST of all, the lordly lion stalks,
Grimly majestic in his lonely walks ;
When round he glares all living creatures fly;
He clears the desert with his rolling eye.
Say, mortal, does he rouse at thy command,
And roar to thee, and live upon thy hand?
Dost thou for him in forests bend thy bow,
And to his gloomy den the morsel throw,
Where bent on death lie hid his tawny brood,
And couch'd in dreadful ambush pant for blood;
Or, stretch'd on broken limbs, consume the day
In darkness wrapt, and slumber o'er their prey?
By the pale moon they take their destin'd round,
And lash their sides, and furious tear the ground.
Now shrieks and dying groans the desert fill;
They rage, they rend; their rav'nous jaws distill
|