Our languid joints we'll peaceably recline, And 'midst the flowers and opening blossoms dine. PASTORAL III.-Night. AMYNTAS-FLORELLUS. AMYNTAS. WHILE yet grey Twilight does his empire hold, FLORELLUS. The grassy meads that smiled serenely gay, Q AMYNTAS. What awful silence reigns thro'out the shade! The peaceful olive bends his drooping head; No sound is heard o'er all the gloomy maze; Wide o'er the deep the fiery meteors blaze. FLORELLUS. The west, yet tinged with Sol's effulgent ray, With feeble light illumes our homeward way; The glowing stars with keener lustre burn, While round the earth their glowing axles turn. AMYNTAS. What mighty power conducts the stars on high! Who bids these comets thro' our system fly! Who wafts the lightning to the icy pole, And thro' our regions bids the thunders roll? FLORELLUS. But say, what mightier power from nought could raise The earth, the sun, and all that fiery maze AMYNTAS. That righteous Power, before whose heavenly eye The stars are nothing, and the planets die ; Whose breath divine supports our mortal frame; Who made the lion wild and lambkin tame. FLORELLUS. At His command the bounteous Spring returns; Hot Summer, raging o'er th' Atlantic, burns; The yellow Autumn crowns our sultry toil; And Winter's snows prepare the cumbrous soil. AMYNTAS. By Him the morning darts his purple ray; FLORELLUS. Swayed by his word, the nutrient dews descend, And growing pastures to the moisture bend; The vernal blossoms sip his falling showers; Themeads are garnished with his opening flowers. AMYNTAS. For man, the object of his chiefest care, Fowls he hath formed to wing the ambient air For him the steer his lusty neck doth bend; Fishes for him their scaly fins extend. FLORELLUS. Wide o'er the orient sky the moon appears, AMYNTAS. Hushed are the busy numbers of the day; Locked in thy arms, our cares a refuge find. Asleep, the lover with his mistress strays And all his flattering visions quickly fly. FLORELLUS. Now owls and bats infest the midnight scene; Dire snakes envenomed twine along the green; Forsook by man the rivers mourning glide, And groaning echoes swell the noisy tide; Straight to our cottage let us bend our way; THE SIMILE. AT noontide, as Colin and Sylvia lay A butterfly, waked by the heat of the day, Near the shade of this covert a young shepherd boy The gaudy brisk flutterer spies, Who held it as pastime to seek and destroy From the lily he hunted this fly to the rose; From the rose to the lily again; Till, weary with tracing its motions, he chose To leave the pursuit with disdain. |