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Thou doft innocently enjoy,
Nor does thy luxury destroy:

Thee country hinds with gladness hear,
Prophet of the ripened year

!

To thee, of all things upon earth,

Life is no longer than thy mirth.

Happy infect, happy, thou

Doft neither age nor winter know.

But when thou 'ft drunk, and danced and fung, Thy fill the flowery leaves among,

Sated with thy summer feast

Thou retir'ft to endless reft.

COWLEY.

HYMN.

How cheerful along the gay mead
The daify and cowslip appear!
The flocks, as they carelessly feed,
Rejoice in the fpring of the year.

The myrtles that deck the gay bowers,
The herbage that fprings from the fod,
Trees, plants, cooling fruits, and fweet flowers,
All rife to the praise of my God.

Shall

The Bulfinch in Town.

Then let not what I cannot have
My cheer of mind destroy;
While thus I fing, I am a king,

Although a poor blind boy.

CIBBER.

THE BULFINCH IN TOWN.

HARK to the blackbird's pleafing note;
Sweet ufher of the vocal throng!
Nature directs his warbling throat,
And all that hear admire the fong.

Yon bulfinch, with unvary'd tone,
Of cadence harsh and accent fhrill,
Has brighter plumage to atone
For want of harmony and skill.

And while to please fome courtly fair
He one dull tune with labour learns,
A well-gilt cage, remote from air,
And faded plumes, is all he earns.

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Go, hapless captive! ftill repeat
The founds which Nature never taught;
Go, liftening fair! and call them fweet,
Because you know them dearly bought.

Unenvied both, go hear and fing
Your ftudied music o'er and o'er!
Whilst I attend th' inviting spring
In fields where birds unfettered foar.

LADY LUXBOROUGH.

THE KID.

A TEAR bedews my Delia's eye
To think yon playful kid must die;
From cryftal fpring, and flowery mead,
Muft, in his prime of life, recede!

Erewhile, in fportive circles, round

She faw him wheel, and frifk, and bound;
From rock to rock purfue his way,"

And on the fearful margin play.

Pleafed

The First of April.

Pleased on his various freaks to dwell,
She faw him climb my ruftic cell;

Thence eye my lawns with verdure bright,
And seem all ravished at the fight.

She tells with what delight he flood
To trace his features in the flood:
Then skipp'd aloof with quaint amaze;
And then drew near again to gaze.

She tells me how with eager speed
He flew to hear my vocal reed ;
And how with critic face profound,
And steadfast ear, devour'd the found.

His every frolic, light as air,
Deferves the gentle Delia's care;
And tears bedew her tender eye

To think the playful kid must die.

II

SHENSTONE,

THE FIRST OF APRIL.

MINDFUL of difafter paft,.

And fhrinking at the northern blast,....

The

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The First of April.

The fleety storm returning still,

The morning hoar, the evening chill,
Reluctant comes the timid Spring.
Scarce a bee with airy ring

Murmurs the bloffom'd boughs around
That clothe the garden's fouthern bound;
Scarce the hardy primrose peeps

From the dark dell's entangled steeps:
O'er the field of waving broom

Slowly shoots the golden bloom:

Scant, along the ridgy land

The beans their new-born ranks expand;
The fresh-turned foil with tender blades
Thinly the fprouting barley fhades:
The fwallow, for a moment feen,
Skims in hafte the village green:
Fraught with a tranfient frozen shower,
If a cloud fhould haply lower,
Sailing o'er the landscape dark,
Mute on a fudden is the lark;
But, when gleams the fun again
O'er the pearl-besprinkled plain,
And from behind his watery veil
Looks through the thin defcending hail,

She

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