[1]ON THE PLEASURES OF RURAL LIFE.
BOOK THE FIFTH, EPODE THE SECOND.
I.
Thrice happy he, whose life restores
The pleasures pure of early times;
That ne'er, with anxious heart, explores
The rugged heights Ambition climbs;
Exempt from all the din, the toil, the care,
That Cities for their busy Sons prepare;
Fatigue, beneath the name of pleasure,
Contentious law, usurious treasure,
A tedious mean attendance on the Great,
And emulation vain of all their pomp and state.
II.
Not his sound and balmy sleep
The trumpet's martial warning breaks;
Nor the loud billows of the angry Deep,
When thro' the straining cords the Tempest shrieks;
But the Morning's choral lay,
Chanted wild from every spray.
Swift at the summons flies the wilder'd dream,
And up he springs alert, to meet the orient beam.
I.
The vine-clad hill he lightly scales,
Where [2]tall the frequent poplars rise,
From branch to branch assiduous trails
The pendent clusters rich supplies;
And cautious prunes the weak, the useless shoot,
Engrafting healthier boughs, that promise fruit.—
Then his arms serenely folding,
And the smiling scene beholding,
Marks, as the fertile valley winds away,
His Flocks and lowing Herds, in ample numbers stray.
II.
Then to the warm bank below,
Yellow with the morning-ray,
And sees his shelter'd hives in even row,
And hears their hum mix with the linnet's lay.
Recent from the crystal springs
Many a vessel pure he brings,
In them, from all the waxen cells to drain
The fragrant essence rich of flow'ry dale and plain.