'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, And flounder into hornpipes. The mountain stirr'd its bushy crown, The linden broke her ranks and rent The woodbine wreaths that bind her, And down the middle buzz! she went With all her bees behind her: The poplars, in long order due, With cypress promenaded, The shock-head willows two and two By rivers gallopaded. Came wet-shot alder from the wave, 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, And shepherds from the mountain-eaves As dash'd about the drunken leaves 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. "Tis vain! in such a brassy age But what is that I hear? a sound They read Botanic Treatises, And Works on Gardening thro' there, And Methods of transplanting trees, To look as if they grew there. The wither'd Misses! how they prose By squares of tropic summer shut And warm'd in crystal cases. But these, tho' fed with careful dirt, And I must work thro' months of toil, To grow my own plantation. ST. AGNES' EVE. DEEP on the convent-roof the snows The shadows of the convent-towers Still creeping with the creeping hours Make Thou my spirit pure and clear As are the frosty skies, Or this first snowdrop of the year As these white robes are soil'd and dark, To yonder shining ground; As this pale taper's earthly spark, To yonder argent round; |