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.
Fraught with a transient, frozen shower,
If a cloud should haply lower,
Sailing o'er the landscape dark,
Mute on a sudden is the lark;
But when gleams the sun again
O'er the pearl-besprinkled plain,
And from behind his watery vail
Looks through the thin-descending hail;
She mounts, and lessening to the sight,
Salutes the blythe return of light,
And high her tuneful track pursues
'Mid the dim rainbow's scatter'd hues.
Where in venerable rows
Widely waving oaks inclose
The moat of yonder antique hall,
Swarm the rooks with clamorous call;
And to the toils of nature true,
Wreathe their capacious nests anew.
Musing through the lawny park,
The lonely poet loves to mark,
How various greens in faint degrees
Tinge the tall groups of various trees;
While, careless of the changing year,
The pine cerulean, never sere,
Towers distinguish'd from the rest,
And proudly vaunts her winter vest.
Within some whispering osier isle, Where Glym's low banks neglected smile; And each trim meadow still retains
The wintry torrent's oozy stains:
Beneath a willow, long forsook,
The fisher seeks his custom'd nook ;
And bursting through the crackling sedge
That crowns the current's cavern'd edge,
He startles from the bordering wood
The bashful wild-duck's early brood.
O'er the broad downs, a novel race,
Frisk the lambs with faltering pace,
And with eager bleatings fill
The foss that skirts the beacon'd hill.
His free-born vigour yet unbroke
To lordly man's usurping yoke,
The bounding colt forgets to play,
Basking beneath the noontide ray,
And stretch'd among the daisies pied
Of a green dingle's sloping side :
While far beneath, where nature spreads
Her boundless length of level meads,
In loose luxuriance taught to stray,
A thousand tumbling rills inlay
With silver veins the vale, or pass
Redundant through the sparkling grass.
Yet, in these presages rude,
Midst her pensive solitude,
Fancy, with prophetic glance,
Sees the teeming months advance;
The field, the forest, green and gay,
The dappled slope, the tedded hay;
Sees the reddening orchard blow,
The harvest wave, the vintage flow :
Sees June unfold his glossy robe
Of thousand hues o'er all the globe :
Sees Ceres grasp her crown of corn,
And Plenty load her ample horn.
From the "Poems" of 1782.
HEN the British warrior Queen,
Bleeding from the Roman rods,
Sought with an indignant mien,
Counsel of her country's gods:
Sage beneath a spreading oak,
Sat the Druid, hoary chief,
Ev'ry burning word he spoke
Full of rage, and full of grief.
"Princess! if our aged eyes
Weep upon thy matchless wrongs,
'Tis because resentment ties
All the terrors of our tongues.
"Rome shall perish,-write that word
In the blood that she has spilt,-
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