These, far dispers’d, on timorous pinions fly,
To sport and flutter in a kinder sky.
To kinder skies, where gentler manners reign,
I turn; and France displays her bright domain. 240
Gay, sprightly land of mirth and social ease,
Pleas’d with thyself, whom all the world can please,
How often have I led thy sportive choir,
With tuneless pipe, beside the murmuring Loire!
Where shading elms along the margin grew, 245
And freshen’d from the wave the zephyr flew;