FIRST ADVENT OF LOVE[443:2]
O fair is Love's first hope to gentle mind!
As Eve's first star thro' fleecy cloudlet peeping;
And sweeter than the gentle south-west wind.
O'er willowy meads, and shadow'd waters creeping,
And Ceres' golden fields;—the sultry hind 5
Meets it with brow uplift, and stays his reaping.
? 1824.
FOOTNOTES:
[443:2] First published in 1834. In a MS. note, dated September 1827, it is included in 'Relics of my School-boy Muse: i. e. fragments of poems composed before my fifteenth year', P. W., 1852, Notes, p. 379; but in an entry in a notebook dated 1824, Coleridge writes: 'A pretty unintended couplet in the prose of Sidney's Arcadia:—
'And, sweeter than a gentle south-west wind
O'er flowery fields and shadowed waters creeping
In summer's extreme heat.'
The passage which Coleridge versified is to be found in the Arcadia:—
'Her breath is more sweet than a gentle south-west wind, which comes creeping over flowing fields and shadowed waters in the heat of summer.'