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The fire fair-blazing and the vestment warm;
In vain his little children, peeping out
Into the mingling storm, demand their sire,
With tears of artless innocence. Alas!
Nor wife nor children more shall he behold,
Nor friends nor sacred home: on every nerve
The deadly Winter seizes, shuts up sense,
And, o'er his inmost vitals creeping cold,

Lays him along the snows a stiffened corse,
Stretched out and bleaching in the northern blast.

1725.

FROM
SUMMER

1726.

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Now swarms the village o'er the joyful mead:
The rustic youth, brown with meridian toil,
Healthful and strong; full as the summer rose
Blown by prevailing suns, the ruddy maid,
Half naked, swelling on the sight, and all
Her kindled graces burning o'er her cheek;
Even stooping age is here; and infant hands
Trail the long rake, or, with the fragrant load
O'ercharged, amid the kind oppression roll.
Wide flies the tedded grain; all in a row
Advancing broad, or wheeling round the field,
They spread the breathing harvest to the sun,
That throws refreshful round a rural smell:
Or, as they rake the green-appearing ground,
And drive the dusky wave along the mead,
The russet hay-cock rises thick behind,
In order gay: while, heard from dale to dale,
Waking the breeze, resounds the blended voice
Of happy labour, love, and social glee.

Or, rushing thence in one diffusive band,
They drive the troubled flocks, by many a dog
Compelled, to where the mazy-running brook
Forms a deep pool, this bank abrupt and high,
And that fair-spreading in a pebbled shore.
Urged to the giddy brink, much is the toil,

The clamour much, of men and boys and dogs,

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Ere the soft fearful people to the flood
Commit their woolly sides; and oft the swain,
On some impatient seizing, hurls them in:
Emboldened then, nor hesitating more,

Fast, fast they plunge amid the flashing wave,
And, panting, labour to the farther shore.
Repeated this, till deep the well-washed fleece
Has drunk the flood, and from his lively haunt

The trout is banished by the sordid stream,

Heavy and dripping, to the breezy brow

Slow move the harmless race; where, as they spread
Their swelling treasures to the sunny ray,
Inly disturbed, and wondering what this wild
Outrageous tumult means, their loud complaints
The country fill, and, tossed from rock to rock,
Incessant bleatings run around the hills.
At last, of snowy white, the gathered flocks
Are in the wattled pen innumerous pressed,
Head above head; and, ranged in lusty rows,
The shepherds sit and whet the sounding shears.
The housewife waits to roll her fleecy stores,
With all her gay-drest maids attending round:
One, chief, in gracious dignity enthroned,
Shines o'er the rest, the pastoral queen, and rays
Her smiles, sweet-beaming, on her shepherd-king,
While the glad circle round them yield their souls
To festive mirth and wit that knows no gall.
Meantime their joyous task goes on apace:
Some, mingling, stir the melted tar, and some
Deep on the new-shorn vagrant's heaving side
To stamp his master's cipher ready stand;
Others the unwilling wether drag along;
And, glorying in his might, the sturdy boy
Holds by the twisted horns th' indignant ram.
Behold where, bound and of its robe bereft

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By needy man, that all-depending lord,

How meek, how patient the mild creature lies!
What softness in its melancholy face,

What dumb complaining innocence, appears!

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Fear not, ye gentle tribes, 't is not the knife
Of horrid slaughter that is o'er you waved;

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No, 't is the tender swain's well-guided shears,
Who having now, to pay his annual care,
Borrowed your fleece, to you a cumbrous load,
Will send you bounding to your hills again.

A simple scene: yet hence Britannia sees
Her solid grandeur rise; hence she commands
Th' exalted stores of every brighter clime,
The treasures of the sun without his rage;
Hence, fervent all, with culture, toil, and arts,
Wide glows her land; her dreadful thunder hence
Rides o'er the waves sublime, and now, even now,
Impending hangs o'er Gallia's humbled coast;
Hence rules the circling deep, and awes the world.
'Tis raging noon; and, vertical, the sun
Darts on the head direct his forceful rays.
O'er heaven and earth, far as the ranging eye
Can sweep, a dazzling deluge reigns, and all
From pole to pole is undistinguished blaze.
In vain the sight, dejected to the ground,
Stoops for relief; thence hot-ascending steams
And keen reflection pain. Deep to the root
Of vegetation parched, the cleaving fields
And slippery lawn an arid hue disclose,
Blast Fancy's bloom, and wither even the soul.
Echo no more returns the cheerful sound

Of sharpening scythe; the mower, sinking, heaps
O'er him the humid hay, with flowers perfumed;
And scarce a chirping grasshopper is heard
Through the dumb mead. Distressful Nature pants.
The very streams look languid from afar,
Or through th' unsheltered glade, impatient, seem
To hurl into the covert of the grove.
All-conquering Heat, oh intermit thy wrath!
And on my throbbing temples, potent thus,
Beam not so fierce! Incessant still you flow,
And still another fervent flood succeeds,
Poured on the head profuse. In vain I sigh,
And restless turn, and look around for night:
Night is far off, and hotter hours approach.
Thrice happy he who on the sunless side
Of a romantic mountain, forest-crowned,

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Beneath the whole collected shade reclines,

Or in the gelid caverns, woodbine-wrought
And fresh bedewed with ever-sprouting streams,

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Sits coolly calm, while all the world without,
Unsatisfied and sick, tosses in noon:

Emblem instructive of the virtuous man,

Who keeps his tempered mind serene and pure,
And every passion aptly harmonized,

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Amid a jarring world with vice inflamed.

How changed the scene! In blazing height of noon

The sun, oppressed, is plunged in thickest gloom;
Still horror reigns, a dreary twilight round
Of struggling night and day malignant mixed;
For, to the hot equator crowding fast,
Where, highly rarefied, the yielding air
Admits their stream, incessant vapours roll-
Amazing clouds on clouds continual heaped,
Or whirled tempestuous by the gusty wind,
Or silent borne along, heavy and slow,

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From cloud to cloud the rending lightnings rage;
Till, in the furious elemental war

Dissolved, the whole precipitated mass
Unbroken floods and solid torrents pour.

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1726.

FROM
SPRING

Come, gentle Spring, ethereal mildness, come!
And from the bosom of yon dropping cloud,
While music wakes around, veiled in a shower
Of shadowing roses, on our plains descend!

O Hertford, fitted or to shine in courts
With unaffected grace, or walk the plain
With Innocence and Meditation joined

1727.

5

In soft assemblage, listen to my song,

Which thy own season paints, when Nature all
Is blooming and benevolent, like thee.

And see where surly Winter passes off,
Far to the north, and calls his ruffian blasts:
His blasts obey, and quit the howling hill,
The shattered forest, and the ravaged vale;
While softer gales succeed, at whose kind touch-
Dissolving snows in livid torrents lost-

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The mountains lift their green heads to the sky.
As yet the trembling year is unconfirmed,
And Winter oft at eve resumes the breeze,
Chills the pale morn, and bids his driving sleets
Deform the day delightless; so that scarce
The bittern knows his time, with bill engulfed,
To shake the sounding marsh, or from the shore
The plovers when to scatter o'er the heath
And sing their wild notes to the listening waste.
At last from Aries rolls the bounteous sun,
And the bright Bull receives him. Then no more
Th' expansive atmosphere is cramped with cold,
But, full of life and vivifying soul,

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Lifts the light clouds sublime and spreads them thin,

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Fleecy and white, o'er all-surrounding heaven;

Forth fly the tepid airs, and, unconfined,

Unbinding earth, the moving softness strays.

Joyous, th' impatient husbandman perceives

Relenting Nature, and his lusty steers

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Drives from their stalls, to where the well-used plough

Lies in the furrow, loosened from the frost;

There, unrefusing, to the harnessed yoke

They lend their shoulder, and begin their toil,

Cheered by the simple song and soaring lark;

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Meanwhile incumbent o'er the shining share
The master leans, removes th' obstructing clay,

Winds the whole work, and sidelong lays the glebe.

White through the neighbouring fields the sower stalks,
With measured step, and liberal throws the grain

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Into the faithful bosom of the ground;
The harrow follows harsh, and shuts the scene.

Be gracious, Heaven! for now laborious man

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