The sun is in the Lion mounted high;
The Syrian star
Barks from afar,
And with his sultry breath infects the sky;
The ground below is parched, the heavens above us fry:
The shepherd drives his fainting flock
Beneath the covert of a rock,
And seeks refreshing rivulets nigh:
The Sylvans to their shades retire,
Those very shades and streams new shades and streams require,
And want a cooling breeze of wind to fan the raging fire.
VI.
Thou, what befits the new Lord Mayor,[64]
And what the city factions dare,
And what the Gallic arms will do,
And what the quiver-bearing foe,
Art anxiously inquisitive to know:
But God has, wisely, hid from human sight
The dark decrees of future fate,
And sown their seeds in depth of night;
He laughs at all the giddy turns of state,
When mortals search too soon, and fear too late.
VII.
Enjoy the present smiling hour,
And put it out of fortune's power;
The tide of business, like the running stream,
Is sometimes high, and sometimes low,
A quiet ebb, or a tempestuous flow,
And always in extreme.
Now with a noiseless gentle course
It keeps within the middle bed;
Anon it lifts aloft the head,
And bears down all before it with impetuous force:
And trunks of trees come rolling down,
Sheep and their folds together drown;
Both house and homested into seas are borne,
And rocks are from their old foundations torn,
And woods, made thin with winds, their scattered honours mourn.
VIII.
Happy the man, and happy he alone,
He, who can call to-day his own;
He who, secure within, can say,
To-morrow do thy worst, for I have lived to-day:
Be fair, or foul, or rain, or shine,
The joys I have possessed, in spite of fate, are mine;
Not heaven itself upon the past has power,
But what has been, has been, and I have had my hour.
IX.