Thou wert a blonde-hair’d maid without a stain,
So neat, so prim, so cool! I stay’d in vain
To see thy bosom’s guarded gates unroll,
And Inspiration breathe upon thy soul.
A zeal and ardour for those lofty themes,
By chilly Reason scorn’d for airy dreams,
But wringing from the noble and the good
The toil of hand and heart, and brain and blood.
On hills with vineyards’ clambering leafage gay,
Glass’d in the Rhine we roamed one summer day;