II. 2.

Ye nymphs who guard the pathless grove,
Ye blue-eyed sisters of the streams,

With whom I wont at morn to rove,
With whom at noon I talked in dreams;
Oh! take me to your haunts again,
The rocky spring, the greenwood glade;
To guide my lonely footsteps deign,

To prompt my slumbers in the murmuring shade, And soothe my vacant ear with many an airy strain.

II. 3.

And thou, my faithful harp, no longer mourn
Thy drooping master's inauspicious hand:
Now brighter skies and fresher gales return,
Now fairer maids thy melody demand.
Daughters of Albion, listen to my lyre.

O Phœbus, guardian of the Aonian choir,
Why sounds not mine harmonious as thy own,
When all the virgin deities above,

With Venus and with Juno, move

In concert round the Olympian father's throne?

III. I.

Thee too, protectress of my lays,

Elate with whose majestic call,

Above degenerate Latium's praise,
Above the slavish boast of Gaul,

I dare from impious thrones reclaim,
And wanton sloth's ignoble charms,

The honours of a poet's name,

To Somers' counsels, or to Hampden's arms, Thee, Freedom, I rejoin, and bless thy genuine flame.

III. 2.

Great citizen of Albion. Thee
Heroic Valour still attends,

And useful Science, pleased to see
How Art her studious toil extends:
While Truth, diffusing from on high
A lustre unconfined as day,

Fills and commands the public eye;

Till, pierced and sinking by her powerful ray,

Tame Faith, and monkish Awe, like nightly demons, fly.

III. 3.

Hence the whole land the patriot's ardour shares:

Hence dread Religion dwells with social Joy;
And holy passions and unsullied cares,

In youth, in age, domestic life employ.
O fair Britannia, hail! with partial love,
The tribes of men their native seats approve,

Unjust and hostile to each foreign fame :

But when for generous minds and manly laws A nation holds her prime applause,

There public zeal shall all reproof disclaim.

THE FIRST OF APRIL.

WARTON.

Probably composed before 1760, but printed in 1777.

WITH dalliance rude young Zephyr woos

Coy May. Full oft with kind excuse

The boisterous boy the Fair denies,

Or, with a scornful smile complies.

Mindful of disaster past,

And shrinking at the northern blast,
The sleety storm returning still,

The morning hoar, the evening chill;
Reluctant comes the timid Spring.
Scarce a bee, with airy ring,

Murmurs the blossom'd boughs around,

That clothe the garden's southern bound:

Scarce a sickly straggling flower

Decks the rough castle's rifted tower:
Scarce the hardy primrose peeps

From the dark dell's entangled steeps:

O'er the field of waving broom,

Slowly shoots the golden bloom :
And, but by fits, the furze-clad dale
Tinctures the transitory gale.

While from the shrubbery's naked maze,
Where the vegetable blaze

Of Flora's brightest 'broidery shone,
Every chequer'd charm is flown ;
Save that the lilac hangs to view
Its bursting gems in clusters blue.

Scant along the ridgy land

The beans their new-born ranks expand:
The fresh-turn'd soil with tender blades
Thinly the sprouting barley shades:
Fringing the forest's devious edge,
Half rob'd appears the hawthorn hedge,
Or to the distant eye displays
Weakly green its budding sprays.

The swallow, for a moment seen,
Skims in haste the village green:
From the grey moor, on feeble wing,
The screaming plovers idly spring :
The butterfly, gay-painted soon,
Explores awhile the tepid noon ;
And fondly trusts its tender dyes
To fickle suns, and flattering skies.