THE HAMLET.
AN ODE.
The hinds how blest, who ne’er beguiled
To quit their hamlet’s hawthorn wild,
Nor haunt the crowd, nor tempt the main,
For splendid care and guilty gain!
When morning’s twilight-tinctured beam
Strikes their low thatch with slanting gleam,
They rove abroad in ether blue,
To dip the scythe in fragrant dew;
The sheaf to bind, the beech to fell,
That nodding shades a craggy dell.
Midst gloomy glades, in warbles clear,
Wild nature’s sweetest notes they hear:
On green untrodden banks they view
The hyacinth’s neglected hue;
In their lone haunts, and woodland rounds,
They spy the squirrel’s airy bounds;
And startle from her ashen spray,
Across the glen, the screaming jay:
Each native charm their steps explore
Of Solitude’s sequester’d store.
For them the moon with cloudless ray
Mounts, to illume their homeward way:
Their weary spirits to relieve,
The meadows incense breathe at eve.
No riot mars the simple fare,
That o’er a glimmering hearth they share:
But when the curfew’s measured roar
Duly, the darkening valleys o’er,
Has echoed from the distant town,
They wish no beds of cygnet-down,
No trophied canopies, to close
Their drooping eyes in quick repose.
Their little sons, who spread the bloom
Of health around the clay-built room,
Or through the primrosed coppice stray,
Or gambol in the new-mown hay;
Or quaintly braid the cowslip-twine,
Or drive afield the tardy kine;
Or hasten from the sultry hill,
To loiter at the shady rill;
Or climb the tall pine’s gloomy crest,
To rob the raven’s ancient nest.
Their humble porch with honey’d flowers
The curling woodbine’s shade embowers;
From the small garden’s thymy mound
Their bees in busy swarms resound:
Nor fell Disease, before his time,
Hastes to consume life’s golden prime.
But when their temples long have wore
The silver crown of tresses hoar,
As studious still calm peace to keep,
Beneath a flowery turf they sleep.
T. Warton, 1728–1790.