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GRAY’S POEMS.

  ODES.

  I.—­ON THE SPRING.

  1.  Lo! where the rosy-bosom’d Hours,
       Fair Venus’ train, appear,
     Disclose the long-expecting flowers,
       And wake the purple year! 
     The Attic warbler pours her throat
     Responsive to the cuckoo’s note,
       The untaught harmony of Spring: 
     While, whispering pleasure as they fly,
     Cool Zephyrs through the clear blue sky
       Their gather’d fragrance fling.

  2.  Where’er the oak’s thick branches stretch
       A broader, browner shade. 
     Where’er the rude and moss-grown beech
       O’ercanopies the glade,
     Beside some water’s rushy brink
     With me the Muse shall sit, and think
       (At ease reclined in rustic state)
     How vain the ardour of the crowd,
     How low, how little, are the proud,
        How indigent the great!

  3.  Still is the toiling hand of Care;
       The panting herds repose: 
     Yet hark! how through the peopled air
       The busy murmur glows! 
     The insect youth are on the wing,
     Eager to taste the honied spring,
       And float amid the liquid noon;
     Some lightly o’er the current skim,
     Some show their gaily gilded trim,
       Quick glancing to the sun.

  4.  To Contemplation’s sober eye,
       Such is the race of Man,
     And they that creep, and they that fly,
       Shall end where they began. 
     Alike the busy and the gay
     But flutter through life’s little day,
       In Fortune’s varying colours dress’d;
     Brush’d by the hand of rough Mischance,
     Or chill’d by Age, their airy dance
       They leave, in dust to rest.

  5.  Methinks I hear, in accents low,
       The sportive kind reply,
     Poor Moralist! and what art thou? 
       A solitary fly! 
     Thy joys no glittering female meets,
     No hive hast thou of hoarded sweets,
       No painted plumage to display: 
     On hasty wings thy youth is flown,
     Thy sun is set, thy spring is gone—­
       We frolic while ’tis May.

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  II.—­ON THE DEATH OF A FAVOURITE CAT,

  DROWNED IN A CHINA TUB OF GOLD FISHES.

  1.  ’Twas on a lofty vase’s side,
     Where China’s gayest art had dyed
       The azure flowers that blow,
     Demurest of the tabby kind,
     The pensive Selima, reclined,
       Gazed on the lake below.

  2.  Her conscious tail her joy declared;
     The fair round face, the snowy beard,
       The velvet of her paws,
     Her coat that with the tortoise vies,
     Her ears of jet, and emerald eyes,
       She saw, and purr’d applause.