What time the daisy decks the green, 5 Thy certain voice we hear; Hast thou a star to guide thy path, Or mark the rolling year? Delightful visitant! with thee I hail the time of flowers, 10 And hear the sound of music sweet From birds among the bowers. The schoolboy, wandering through the wood To pull the primrose gay, Starts, the new voice of spring to hear, 15 And imitates thy lay. What time the pea puts on the bloom, Thou fliest thy vocal vale, An annual guest in other lands, Another spring to hail. 20 Sweet bird! thy bower is ever green, Thy sky is ever clear; Thou hast no sorrow in thy song, No winter in thy year! Oh could I fly, I’d fly with thee! 25 We’d make, with joyful wing, Our annual visit o’er the globe, Companions of the spring. _John Logan._ CXLVII _ODE TO EVENING._ If aught of oaten stop, or pastoral song, May hope, chaste Eve, to soothe thy modest ear, Like thy own solemn springs, Thy springs, and dying gales; O Nymph reserved, while now the bright-haired Sun 5 Sits in yon western tent, whose cloudy skirts, With brede ethereal wove, O’erhang his wavy bed: Now air is hushed, save where the weak-eyed bat, With short shrill shriek flits by on leathern wing; 10 Or where the beetle winds His small but sullen horn, As oft he rises ’midst the twilight path, Against the pilgrim borne in heedless hum; Now teach me, Maid composed, 15 To breathe some softened strain, Whose numbers, stealing through thy darkening vale, May not unseemly with its stillness suit; As, musing slow, I hail Thy genial loved return! 20 For when thy folding-star arising shows His paly circlet, at his warning lamp The fragrant Hours, and Elves Who slept in buds the day, And many a Nymph who wreathes her brows with sedge, 25 And sheds the freshening dew, and, lovelier still, The pensive Pleasures sweet, Prepare thy shadowy car. Then let me rove some wild and heathy scene; Or find some ruin ’midst its dreary dells, 30 Whose walls more awful nod By thy religious gleams. Or, if chill blustering winds, or driving rain, Prevent my willing feet, be mine the hut, That from the mountain’s side 35 Views wilds, and swelling floods,