O the jocund face of earth,
Breathing with young grassy birth!
Every tree with foliage clad,
Singing birds in greenwood glad,
Flowering fields for lovers' mirth!
Nor is the next far below it in the same qualities of neatness and artistic brevity.
A-MAYING.
No. 11.
Now the fields are laughing; now the maids
Take their pastime; laugh the leafy glades:
Now the summer days are blooming,
And the flowers their chaliced lamps for love illuming.
Fruit-trees blossom; woods grow green again;
Winter's rage is past: O ye young men,
With the May-bloom shake off sadness!
Love is luring you to join the maidens' gladness.
Let us then together sport and play;
Cytherea bids the young be gay:
Laughter soft and happy voices,
Hope and love invite to mirth when May rejoices.
All the spring is in the lyric next upon my list.