Is this, O life, is this thy boasted prime!
And does thy spring no happier prospect yield?
Why should the sunbeam paint thy glittering clime,
When the keen mildew desolates the field?
How memory pains! Let some gay theme beguile
The musing mind, and soothe to soft delight.
Ye images of woe, no more recoil;
Be life's past scenes wrapt in oblivious night.
Now when fierce Winter, arm'd with wasteful power,
Heaves the wild deep that thunders from afar,
How sweet to sit in this sequester'd bower,
To hear, and but to hear, the mingling war!
Ambition here displays no gilded toy
That tempts on desperate wing the soul to rise
Nor Pleasure's paths to wilds of woe decoy,
Nor Anguish lurks in Grandeur's proud disguise.
Oft has Contentment cheer'd this lone abode
With the mild languish of her smiling eye;
Here Health in rosy bloom has often glow'd,
While loose-robed Quiet stood enamour'd by.
Even the storm lulls to more profound repose;
The storm these humble walls assails in vain;
The shrub is shelter'd when the whirlwind blows,
While the oak's mighty ruin strows the plain.
Blow on, ye winds! Thine, Winter, be the skies,
And toss'd th' infuriate surge, and vales lay waste:
Nature thy temporary rage defies;
To her relief the gentler Seasons haste.
Thron'd in her emerald-car see Spring appear!
(As Fancy wills, the landscape starts to view)
Her emerald-car the youthful Zephyrs bear,
Fanning her bosom with their pinions blue.
Around the jocund Hours are fluttering seen;
And lo, her rod the rose-lipp'd power extends!
And lo, the lawns are deck'd in living green,
And Beauty's bright-ey'd train from heaven descends!
Haste, happy days, and make all nature glad—
But will all nature joy at your return?
O, can ye cheer pale Sickness' gloomy bed,
Or dry the tears that bathe th' untimely urn?