The Farmer's Boy: A Rural Poem

by Robert Bloomfield

In the Procession of SPRING there is a fine series of allegorical
Images.

Advancing SPRING profusely spreads abroad Flowers of kinds, with sweetest fragrance stor'd: Where she treads LOVE gladdens every plain; Delight on tip-toe beats her lucid train; Sweet Hope with conscious brow before her flies, Anticipating wealth from summer skies.

I. v. 271—6.

Compare now this of LUCRETIUS.

It VER et VENUS et Veneris praenuntius ante
Prunatus graditur Zephyrus vestigia propter.
FLORA quibus mater praespergens, ante viai
Cuncta coloribus egregiis et odoribus opplet.

DE NAT. RES. L. V. v. 736-9.
Ed. Brindley 1749.

There SPRING, and VENUS, and her Harbinger,
Near to her moves the winged Zephyrus,
For whom maternal FLORA strews the way
With Flowers of every charming scent and hue.

Or in the very words of BLOOMFIELD,

Flowers of all hues with sweetest fragrance stor'd.

Hope here occupies the place of Zephyrus. DELIGHT on tip-toe supporting the lucid train of Spring,—the image and attitude so full of life and beauty,—is our Poet's own. And what Poet, what Painter, would not have been proud of it?