Sidebilder
PDF
ePub

Soon as the morning trembles o'er the sky, And, unperceiv'd, unfolds the spreading day; Before the ripen'd fields the reapers stand, In fair array; each by the lass he loves, To bear the rougher part, and mitigate By nameless gentle offices her toil,

At once they stoop and swell the lusty sheaves;
While through their cheerful band the rural talk,
The rural scandal, and the rural jest,

Fly harmless, to deceive the tedious time,
And steal unfelt the sultry hours away.

Behind the master walks, builds up the shocks;
And, conscious, glancing oft on ev'ry side
His sated eye, feels his heart heave with joy.
The gleaners spread around, and here and there,
Spike after spike, their scanty harvest pick.
Be not too narrow, husbandmen! but fling
From the full sheaf, with charitable stealth,
The lib'ral handful. Think, oh grateful think!
How good the God of harvest is to you;
Who pours abundance o'er your flowing fields;
While these unhappy partners of your kind
Wide hover round you, like the fowls of heav'n,

And ask their humble dole. The various turns Of fortune ponder; that your sons may want What now, with hard reluctance, faint, ye give.

The lovely young Lavinia once had friends;
And fortune smil'd, deceitful, on her birth.
For, in her helpless years depriv'd of all,
Of ev'ry stay, save innocence and heav'n,
She, with her widow'd mother, feeble, old,
And poor, liv'd in a cottage, far retir'd
Among the windings of a woody vale;
By solitude and deep surrounding shades,
But more by bashful modesty, conceal'd.
Together thus they shunn'd the cruel scorn
Which virtue, sunk to poverty, would meet
From giddy passion and low-minded pride:
Almost on nature's common bounty fed:

Like the gay birds that sung them to repose,
Content, and careless of to-morrow's fare.

Her form was fresher than the morning rose,
When the dew wets its leaves; unstain'd and pure,
As is the lily, or the mountain snow.

The modest virtues mingled in her eyes,

Still on the ground dejected, darting all

Their humid beams into the blooming flow'rs:
Or when the mournful tale her mother told,
Of what her faithless fortune promis'd once,
Thrill'd in her thought, they, like the dewy star
Of ev'ning, shone in tears. A native grace
Sat fair-proportion'd on her polish'd limbs,
Veil'd in a simple robe, their best attire,
Beyond the pomp of dress; for loveliness
Needs not the foreign aid of ornament,
But is when unadorn'd adorn'd the most.
Thoughtless of beauty, she was beauty's self,
Recluse amid the close-embow'ring woods.
As in the hollow breast of Appenine,
Beneath the shelter of encirling hills,
A myrtle rises, far from human eye,

And breathes its balmy fragrance o'er the wild:
So flourish'd blooming, and unseen by all,
The sweet Lavinia; till, at length, compell'd
By strong necessity's supreme command,
With smiling patience in her looks, she went
To glean Palemon's fields. The pride of swains
Palemon was, the gen'rous, and the rich;
Who led the rural life in all its joy

1

[graphic][ocr errors][ocr errors][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small]
« ForrigeFortsett »