How would it please old Ocean to partake, With Sailors longing for a breeze in vain, The harmony that thou best lov'st to make Where earth resembles most his blank domain ! Urania's self might welcome with pleased ear These matins mounting tow'rds her native sphere. Chanter by Heaven attracted, whom no bars To day-light known deter from that pursuit, 'Tis well that some sage instinct, when the stars Come forth at evening, keeps Thee still and mute; For not an eyelid could to sleep incline Wert thou among them, singing as they shine! II. TO THE DAISY. "Her divine skill taught me this, I could some instruction draw, G. WITHERS. IN youth from rock to rock I went, Most pleased when most uneasy; But now my own delights I make, * His muse. When Winter decks his few grey hairs Whole summer fields are thine by right; In shoals and bands, a morrice train, Nor car'st if thou be set at naught : We meet thee, like a pleasant thought, Be Violets in their secret mews The flowers the wanton Zephyrs choose; Thou liv'st with less ambitious aim, If to a rock from rains he fly, And wearily at length should fare; A hundred times, by rock or bower, Some steady love; some brief delight; If stately passions in me burn, And one chance look to Thee should turn, I drink out of an humbler urn A lowlier pleasure; The homely sympathy that heeds The common life, our nature breeds; A wisdom fitted to the needs Of hearts at leisure. When, smitten by the morning ray, Then, cheerful Flower! my spirits play And when, at dusk, by dews opprest And all day long I number yet, An instinct call it, a blind sense; Coming one knows not how, nor whence, Child of the Year! that round dost run Thy course, bold lover of the sun, *Thy long-lost praise thou shalt regain; As in old time; thou not in vain, - Art Nature's favourite. See, in Chaucer and the elder Poets, the honours for merly paid to this flower. |