The whitethorn is budding and rushes are green, The ivy leaves rustle around the ash tree, On the sweet sunny bank blue violets are seen, That tremble beneath the wild hum of the bee....
How sweet is every lengthening day, And every change of weather, When Summer comes, on skies blue grey, And brings her hosts together, Her flocks of birds, her crowds of flowers,...
Huge elm, with rifted trunk all notched and scarred, Like to a warrior's destiny! I love To stretch me often on thy shadowed sward, And hear the laugh of summer leaves above;...
Above the russet clods the corn is seen Sprouting its spiry points of tender green, Where squats the hare, to terrors wide awake, Like some brown clod the harrows failed to break....
O for that sweet, untroubled rest That poets oft have sung!-- The babe upon its mother's breast, The bird upon its young, The heart asleep without a pain-- When shall I know that sleep again? ...
Sweet type of innocence, snow-clothed blossom, Seemly, though vainly, bowing down to shun The storm hard-beating on thy wan white bosom, Left in the swail, and little cheer'd by sun;...
Home furthest off grows dearer from the way; And when the army in the Indias lay Friends' letters coming from his native place Were like old neighbours with their country face....
When trouble haunts me, need I sigh? No, rather smile away despair; For those have been more sad than I, With burthens more than I could bear; Aye, gone rejoicing under care...
And has the Spring's all glorious eye No lesson to the mind? The birds that cleave the golden sky-- Things to the earth resigned-- Wild flowers that dance to every wind-- Do they no memory leave behind?...
Within a thick and spreading hawthorn bush, That overhung a molehill large and round, I heard from morn to morn a merry thrush Sing hymns to sunrise, and I drank the sound...
Once musing o'er an old effaced stone, Longing to know whose dust it did conceal, I anxious ponder'd o'er what might reveal, And sought the seeming date with weeds o'ergrown;...
He eats (a moment's stoppage to his song) The stolen turnip as he goes along; And hops along and heeds with careless eye The passing crowded stage coach reeling bye....
Emblazoned Vapour! Half-eternal Shade! That gathers strength from ruin and decay;-- Emperor of empires! (for the world hath made No substance that dare take thy shade away;)...
Among the taller wood with ivy hung, The old fox plays and dances round her young. She snuffs and barks if any passes bye And swings her tail and turns prepared to fly....
Young Chloe looks sweet as the rose, And her love might be reckoned no less, But her bosom so freely bestows That all may a portion possess. Her smiles would be cheering to see,...
Age yellows my leaf with a daily decline, And nature turns sick with decay; Short is the thread on life's spool that is mine, And few are my wishes to stay: The bud, that has seen but the sun of an hour,...
In life's first years as on a mother's breast, When Nature nurs'd me in her flowery pride, I cull'd her bounty, such as seemed best, And made my garlands by some hedge-row side:...