When teeming buds, and chearful greens ap
And western gales unlock the lazy year:
The joyous birds thy welcome first express,
Whose native fongs thy genial fire confess;
Then favage beafts bound o'er their flighted
food,
Struck with thy darts, and tempt the raging
All nature is thy gift; earth, air, and sea: 201 Of all that breathes, the various progeny,
Stung with delight, is goaded on by thee.
O'er barren mountains, o'er the flowery plain,
The leafy foreft, and the liquid main,
Extends thy uncontrol'd and boundless reign.
Through all the living regions doft thou move, 26
And scatter'ft, where thou go'ft, the kindly feeds
of love,
Since then the race of every living thing
Obeys thy power; fince nothing new can spring
Without thy warmth, without thy influence
bear,
Or beautiful, or lovefome can appear;
Be thou my aid, my tuneful fong infpire,
And kindle with thy own productive fire;
While all thy province, Nature, I survey,
And fing to Memmius an immortal lay 35
Of heaven and earth, and every where thy
wondrous power display:
To Memmius, under thy fweet influence born, Whom thou with all thy gifts and graces
The rather then affift my Muse and me, Infufing verfes worthy him and thee. Meantime on land and fea let barbarous difcord ceafe,
And lull the liftning world in univerfal peace.
To thee mankind their foft repofe must owe;
For thou alone that bleffing canft bestow;
Because the brutal business of the war
Is manag'd by thy dreadful fervant's care;
Who oft retires from fighting fields, to prove
The pleasing pains of thy eternal love;
And, panting on thy breast, fupinely lies,
While with thy heavenly form he feeds his fa-
mifh'd eyes;
Sucks in with open lips thy balmy breath,
By turns reftor'd to life, and plung'd in pleasing
There while thy curling limbs about him move,
Involv'd and fetter'd in the links of love,
When, wishing all, he nothing can deny,
Thy charms in that aufpicious moment try;
With winning eloquence our peace implore,
And quiet to the weary world reftore.
"TIS pleasant, safely to behold from shore
The rolling ship, and hear the tempest roar :
Not that another's pain is our delight;
But pains unfelt produce the pleasing sight.
Tis pleasant alfo to behold from far
The moving legions mingled in the war.
But much more fweet thy labouring fteps to
guide
To virtue's heights, with wifdom well fup
And all the magazines of learning fortify'd:
From thence to look below on human kind, 10
Bewilder'd in the maze of life, and blind:
To fee vain fools ambitiously contend
For wit and power; their laft endeavours bend
To outshine each other, wafte their time and
In fearch of honour, and pursuit of wealth.
O wretched man! in what a mift of life,
Inclos'd with dangers and with noisy strife,
He spends his little fpan; and overfeeds
His cramm'd defires, with more than nature
needs!
For nature wifely ftints our appetite,
And craves no more than undisturb'd delight: Which minds, unmix'd with cares and fears, obtain ;
A foul ferene, a body void of pain.
So little this corporeal frame requires ;
So bounded are our natural defires,
That wanting all, and fetting pain aside,
With bare privation fenfe is fatisfy'd.
If golden fconces hang not on the walls,
To light the coftly fuppers and the balls;
If the proud palace fhines not with the state 30
Of burnish'd bowls, and of reflected plate;
If well-tun'd harps, nor the more pleafing found
Of voices, from the vaulted roofs rebound;
Yet on the grafs, beneath a poplar fhade,
By the cool ftream our careless limbs are lay'd;
With cheaper pleasures innocently bleft,
When the warm fpring with gaudy flowers is
Nor will the raging fever's fire abate,
With golden canopies and beds of state:
But the poor patient will as foon be found
On the hard mattress, or the mother ground.
Then fince our bodies are not eas'd the more
By birth, or power, or fortune's wealthy store,
"Tis plain, these useless toys of every kind
As little can relieve the labouring mind:
Unless we could suppose the dreadful fight
Of marshal❜d legions moving to the fight,
Could, with their found and terrible array,
Expel our fears, and drive the thoughts of
death away.
But, fince the fuppofition vain appears,
Since clinging cares, and trains of inbred fears,
Are not with founds to be affrighted thence,
But in the midst of pomp purfue the prince,
Not aw'd by arms, but in the presence bold,
Without refpect to purple, or to gold;
Why should not we these pageantries despise;
Whofe worth but in our want of reafon lies?
For life is all in wandring errors led ;
And juft as children are furpris'd with dread,
And tremble in the dark, fo riper years
E'en in broad day-light are poffefs'd with
And shake at fhadows fanciful and vain,
As those which in the breasts of children reign.
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