No warblers can give me delight, How mournful and pensive their strain; Nought sweet can appear to my sight, Since Strephon’s forsaken the plain. With joy I these banks did survey, With pleasure I’ve por’d on the stream: Young Strephon then with me did stray, And of nought but delight I could dream. While he by my side did recline, The flowers seem’d to brighten their bloom; The sun with more lustre did shine, And fragrance the fields did perfume. Still pleas’d with his whispers of love, Still charm’d with his amorous tale; Now beauty’s forsaken the grove, And his absence I’ll ever bewail. How gloomy and dismal the shade, Where Strephon was wont to appear, Where oft his addresses he made, And his accents delighted my ear. Those paths I revisit in pain; Yet love them without knowing why, When fortune no favour will deign, I deem it a pleasure to sigh. In vain have my visitants strove My woes to divert by a smile; Though I seem’d of their jest to approve, My heart was with Strephon the while. Society, spoil’d of each charm, Without him no pleasure can give; In solitude cares will alarm, In his absence ’tis painful to live. When Sol, from the watery main, Ascends to illumine the sky, My thoughts to the loveliest swain, More swift than the lightning can fly. I muse on his charms all the day; The theme seems enchantingly sweet, Nor ends with bright Phœbus’s ray; In dreams I my wishes repeat. Ye angels that succour the brave, Prove guardians to the sweet youth; Still may he with honour behave, Integrity, wisdom and truth. While through distant climes he may rove, His image is fix’d in my view; Let Strephon be constant in love, And Almeda will ever be true. ON _THE SPRING_. Now winter, reluctant, the sway Resigns to the genial spring; Sol sheds an enlivening ray, And warblers delightfully sing. Fresh verdure adorns the gay plains, So lately o’er-mantl’d with snow; The rivers, releas’d from their chains, Do now with soft murmuring flow. The lark and the linnet unite, The Cuckow too joins in the lay; All nature’s profuse of delight, And soft fanning zephyrs now play. How charming the garden appears? Sweet primroses paint the gay vale: Its head now the daffodil rears, The sweetest of seasons to hail, His team now the hind drives along; Quite cheerful he ploughs the rude plain. He hums his love’s praise in a song, Or whistling forgets her disdain. The seed in the furrow he throws, Indulg’d by bright Phœbus’s rays; Rich Ceres vast increase bestows, When Autumn her bounty displays. The lambkins now sport on the mead; They skip round the heath-cover’d hill; Their dams how securely they feed By the side of yon murm’ring rill? Near Damon appears with his lute, And wakes the melodious lay; The songsters, attentive and mute, Are perch’d on the wav’ring spray.