The purple hour of youthful spring has smiled:

A livelier verdure clothes the teeming earth;

Buds press to life, rejoicing in their birth;

The laughing meadows drink the dews of night,

And fresh with opening roses glad the sight:

In song the joyous swains responsive vie;

Wild music floats and mountain melody.

Adventurous seamen spread the embosomed sail

O’er waves light heaving to the western gale;

While village youths their brows with ivy twine,