Without your showers, I breed no flowers, Each field a barren waste appears; If you don't weep, my blossoms sleep, They take such pleasures in your tears. As your decay made room for May, So I must part with all that's mine: My balmy breeze, my blooming trees To torrid suns their sweets resign! O'er April dead, my shades I spread: To her I owe my dress so gay-- Of daughters three, it falls on me To close our triumphs on one day: Thus, to repose, all Nature goes; Month after month must find its doom: Time on the wing, May ends the Spring, And Summer dances on her tomb! [339] First published in the _Freeman's Journal_ where it was signed Philadelphia, April 16, 1787. Text from the edition of 1809. TO AN AUTHOR[340] Your leaves bound up compact and fair, In neat array at length prepare, To pass their hour on learning's stage,[341] To meet the surly critic's rage; The statesman's slight, the smatterer's[342] sneer-- Were these, indeed, your only[343] fear, You might be tranquil and resigned: What most should touch your fluttering mind;[344] Is that, few critics[345] will be found To sift[346] your works, and deal the wound. Thus, when one fleeting year is past On some bye-shelf your book is cast--[347] Another comes, with something new,[348] And drives you fairly out of view: With some to praise, but more to blame, The mind[349] returns to--whence it came; And some alive, who scarce could read[350] Will publish satires on the dead. Thrice happy Dryden[A], who could meet Some rival bard in every street! When all were bent on writing well It was some credit to excel:--[351] [A] See Johnson's lives of the English Poets.--_Freneau's note._ Thrice happy Dryden, who could find A Milbourne for his sport designed-- And Pope, who saw the harmless rage Of Dennis bursting o'er his page Might justly spurn the critic's aim, Who only helped to swell his fame. On these bleak climes by Fortune thrown, Where rigid Reason reigns alone, Where lovely Fancy has no sway, Nor magic forms about us[352] play-- Nor nature takes her summer hue Tell me, what has the muse to do?-- An age employed in edging steel Can no poetic raptures feel; No solitude's attracting power,[353] No leisure of the noon day hour, No shaded stream, no quiet grove Can this fantastic century move; The muse of love in no request-- Go--try your fortune[354] with the rest, One of the nine you should engage,[355] To meet the follies of the age:-- On one, we fear, your choice must fall-- The least engaging of them all--[356] Her visage stern--an angry style-- A clouded brow--malicious smile-- A mind on murdered victims placed-- She, only she, can please the taste!