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Mark! how we meet thee
At dawn of dewy day!
Hark! how we greet thee
With our roundelay!1

While all the goodly things that be
In earth, and air, and ample sea,
Are waking up to welcome thee,

Thou merry month of May !

Flocks on the mountains,

And birds upon the spray,

Tree, turf, and fountains
All hold holiday;

And love, the life of living things,
Love waves his torch and claps his wings,
And loud and wide thy praises sings,
Thou merry month of May!

Reginald Heber: 1783-1826.

Heber made his first mark in poetry as the author of Palestine, perhaps the finest of Oxford prize-poems (1803). He was presented to the living of Hodnet in 1810, and was made Bishop of Calcutta in 1823.

MAY.

OH, the merry May has pleasant hours,
And dreamily they glide,

As if they floated like the leaves
Upon a silver tide;

The trees are full of crimson buds,
And the woods are full of birds,

And the waters flow to music,
Like a tune with pleasant words.

The verdure of the meadow-land
Is creeping to the hills,
The sweet blue-bosom'd violets
Are blowing by the rills;

1 roundelay-in this case, a round: a kind of part-song so constructed as to produce harmony when all its strains are sung together.

The lilac has a load of balm1
For every wind that stirs,

And the larch stands green and beautiful
Amid the sombre firs.

There's perfume upon every wind-
Music in every tree-

Dews for the moisture-loving flowers-
Sweets for the sucking bee:

The sick come forth for the healing South,2
The young are gathering flowers;

And life is a tale of poetry,

That is told by golden hours.

It must be a true philosophy,3
That the spirit when set free
Still lingers about its olden home,
In the flower and the tree,

For the pulse is stirr'd as with voices heard
In the depth of the shady grove,

And while lonely we stray through the fields away,
The heart seems answering love.

Nathaniel Parker Willis: 1806-1867.

(See page 45.)

CONTEMPLATION IN SPRING.

Lo! where the rosy-bosom'd Hours 4
Fair Venus' train, appear,
Disclose the long-expecting flowers,
And wake the purple year!
The attic warbler pours her throat
Responsive to the cuckoo's note,

1 balm-perfume.

2 South-south wind.

3 philosophy-theory.

4 Hours-Horæ, among the ancients the goddesses of the seasons. They had the power of opening the gates of Olympus, where reigned perpetual spring.

Venus-Goddess of love: sometimes attended by the Hora. 6 attic warbler-nightingale.

The untaught harmony of Spring :
While whispering pleasure as they fly,
Cool zephyrs1 through the clear blue sky
Their gather'd fragrance fling.

Where'er the oak's thick branches stretch
A broader, browner shade,
Where'er the rude and moss-grown beech
O'er-canopies 2 the glade,—

Beside some water's rushy brink
With me the Muse shall sit, and think
(At ease reclined in rustic state)
How vain the ardour of the crowd,
How low, how little are the proud,
How indigent the great!

Still is the toiling hand of care;
The panting herds repose:
Yet hark, how thro' the peopled air
The busy murmur glows!

The insect youth are on the wing,
Eager to taste the honied spring,
And float amid the liquid noon :
Some lightly o'er the current skim,
Some show their gaily-gilded trim
Quick glancing to the sun.

To Contemplation's sober eye
Such is the race of Man :
And they that creep, and they that fly,
Shall end where they began.

Alike the busy and the gay

But flutter thro' life's little day,

In Fortune's varying colours drest :

Brush'd by the hand of rough Mischance,

Or chill'd by Age, their airy dance

They leave, in dust to rest.

1 zephyr-among the ancients, one of the winds, the sweetness of whose breath produced flowers and fruit.

2 canopy-a tent-like covering.

Methinks I hear in accents low
The sportive kind reply :

Poor moralist! and what art thou?
A solitary fly!

Thy joys no glittering female meets,
No hive hast thou of hoarded sweets,
No painted plumage to display :
On hasty wings the time is flown,
Thy sun is set, thy spring is gone→
We frolic while 'tis May.

Thomas Gray: 1716-1771.

(See page 57.)

SCENE BETWEEN MAY AND JUNE.

IN lowly dale, fast by a river's side,

With woody hill o'er hill encompass'd round,

A most enchanting wizard did abide,

Than whom a fiend more fell1 is nowhere found.
It was, I ween,2 a lovely spot of ground;
And there a season atween June and May,

Half prankt with spring, with summer half embrown'd
A listless climate made, where, sooth to say,
No living wight could work, ne cared ev'n for play.
Was nought around but images of rest;
Sleep-soothing groves, and quiet lawns between ;
And flowery beds, that slumbrous influence kest 8
From poppies breath'd; and beds of pleasant green,
Where never yet was creeping creature seen.
Meantime unnumber'd glittering streamlets play'd,
And hurled everywhere their waters sheen;
That, as they bicker'd 10 through the sunny shade,
Though restless still themselves a lulling murmur made.

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9

9 sheen-bright.

10 bicker'd quivered rippling.

Join'd to the prattle of the purling rills,
Were heard the lowing herds along the vale,
And flocks loud bleating from the distant hills,
And vacant shepherds piping in the dale:
And now and then sweet Philomel1 would wail,
Or stock-doves plain 2 amid the forest deep,
That drowsy rustled to the sighing gale;
And still a coil3 the grasshopper did keep;
Yet all these sounds y-blent 4 inclinèd all to sleep.
Full in the passage of the vale, above,

A sable, silent, solemn forest stood,

Where nought but shadowy forms was seen to move. As Idless fancied in her dreaming mood:

6

And up the hills, on either side, a wood

Of blackening pines, aye, waving to and fro,

Sent forth a sleepy horror through the blood;

And where this valley winded out, below,

A pleasing land of drowsy-head it was,

[flow.

The murmuring main was heard, and scarcely heard to

Of dreams that wave before the half-shut eye,
And of gay castles in the clouds that pass,
For ever flushing round a summer sky;
There eke the soft delights, that witchingly
Instil a wanton sweetness through the breast,
And the calm pleasures, always hover'd nigh;
But whate'er smacked of noyance or unrest.
Was far, far off expell'd from this delicious nest.

James Thomson: 1700-1748.

Thomson was born at Ednam near Kelso, and educated at Edinburgh College. In 1720 he went to London to seek his fortune, and became tutor to the son of Lord Binning. He acquired literary reputation by the success of his poem on The Seasons, published 1726-1728. His next important work is The Castle of Indolence, from which the above is taken: it was written in imitation of the manner of Spenser.

1 philomel-the nightingale.

2 stock-doves plain-wood-pigeons would complain, their cooing being a plaintive or melancholy sound.

3 coil-noise or bustle.

sable-dark.

7 main-sea.

4

y-blent-blended.

6 Idless-idleness.

8 eke-also.

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