The birch-tree swang her fragrant hair, The bramble cast her berry, The gin within the juniper Began to make him merry, The poplars, in long order due, With cypress promenaded, The shock-head willows two and two By rivers gallopaded. Came wet-shod alder from the wave, Each pluck'd his one foot from the grave, Old elms came breaking from the vine, The vine stream'd out to follow, And, sweating rosin, plump'd the pine And wasn't it a sight to see, When, ere his song was ended, Like some great landslip, tree by tree, And shepherds from the mountain-eaves Look'd down, half-pleased, half-frightened, As dash'd about the drunken leaves The random sunshine lighten'd! Oh, nature first was fresh to men, So youthful and so flexile then, You moved her at your pleasure. Twang out, my fiddle! shake the twigs ! Blow, flute, and stir the stiff-set sprigs, 'Tis vain! in such a brassy age I could not move a thistle ; With strumming and with scraping, The passive oxen gaping. But what is that I hear? a sound Like sleepy counsel pleading: O Lord!-'tis in my neighbour's ground, The modern Muses reading. They read Botanic Treatises, And Works on Gardening thro' there, And Methods of transplanting trees, To look as if they grew there. The wither'd Misses! how they prose And show you slips of all that grows They read in arbours clipt and cut, By squares of tropic summer shut But these, though fed with careful dirt, The poor things look unhappy. 170 Better to me the meanest weed That blows upon its mountain, The vilest herb that runs to seed Beside its native fountain. And I must work thro' months of toil, Upon my proper patch of soil A little garden blossom. ST. AGNES. I. DEEP on the convent-roof the snows Are sparkling to the moon : My breath to heaven like vapour goes: The shadows of the convent-towers Still creeping with the creeping hours Make Thou my spirit pure and clear As are the frosty skies, Or this first snowdrop of the year That in my bosom lies. |