IV. For since the time when Adam first And every bird of Eden burst In carol, every bud to flower, What eyes, like thine, have waken'd hopes, That lets thee neither hear nor see: Are clasp'd the moral of thy life, And that for which I care to live. EPILOGUE. So, Lady Flora, take my lay, And, if you find a meaning there, O whisper to your glass, and say, 'What wonder, if he thinks me fair?' What wonder I was all unwise, To shape the song for your delight Like long-tail'd birds of Paradise That float thro' Heaven, and cannot light? Or old-world trains, upheld at court By Cupid-boys of blooming hueBut take it earnest wed with sport, And either sacred unto you. AMPHION. My father left a park to me, But it is wild and barren, A garden too with scarce a tree, Yet say the neighbours when they call, And in it is the germ of all That grows within the woodland. O had I lived when song was great Nor cared for seed or scion! And had I lived when song was great, And fiddled in the timber! 'Tis said he had a tuneful tongue, Such happy intonation, Wherever he sat down and sung He left a small plantation; Wherever in a lonely grove He set up his forlorn pipes, The gouty oak began to move, The mountain stirr'd its bushy crown, And briony-vine and ivy-wreath The linden broke her ranks and rent With all her bees behind her: The shock-head willows two and two 73 Came wet-shod alder from the wave, Came yews, a dismal coterie; Each pluck'd his one foot from the grave, Old elms came breaking from the vine, And wasn't it a sight to see, When, ere his song was ended, Look'd down, half-pleased, half-frighten'd, 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! And make her dance attendance; Blow, flute, and stir the stiff-set sprigs, And scirrhous roots and tendons. |