Fair Spring! whose simplest promise more delights
Than all their largest wealth, and through the heart
Each joy and new-born hope
With softest influence breathes.
Anne Letitia Barbauld, 1743–1825.
THE FLOWER.
How fresh, O Lord, how sweet and clean
Are thy returns! ev’n as the flow’rs in spring;
To which, besides their own demean,
The late past frost’s tributes of pleasure bring: