EPILOGUE. So, Lady Flora, take my lay, O whisper to your glass, and say, "What wonder, if he thinks me fair?" What wonder I was all unwise, To shape the song for your delight Like long-tail'd birds of Paradise, That float thro' Heaven, and cannot light? Or old-world trains, upheld at court By Cupid-boys of blooming hueBut take it-earnest wed with sport, And either sacred unto you. AMPHION. My father left a park to me, But it was wild and barren, A garden too with scarce a tree And waster than a warren: Yet say the neighbours when they call, It is not bad but good land, And in it is the germ of all That grows within the woodland. O had I lived when song was great In days of old Amphion, And ta'en my fiddle to the gate, Nor cared for seed or scion! And had I lived when song was great, And legs of trees were limber, And ta'en my fiddle to the gate, And fiddled in the timber! "Tis said he had a tuneful tongue, Such happy intonation, Wherever he sat down and sung He left a small plantation; Wherever in a lonely grove He set up his forlorn pipes, The gouty oak began to move, The mountain stirr'd its bushy crown, Coquetting with young beeches; And briony-vine and ivy-wreath Ran forward to his rhyming, And from the valleys underneath Came little copses climbing. The birch-tree swang her fragrant hair, The bramble cast her berry, The gin within the juniper Began to make him merry. The poplars, in long order due, With cypress promenaded, The shock-head willows two and two By rivers gallopaded. Came wet-shod alder from the wave, Came yews, a dismal coterie; Each pluck'd his one foot from the grave, Old elms came breaking from the vine, And, sweating rosin, plump'd the pine And wasn't it a sight to see, When, ere his song was ended, Like some great landslip, tree by tree, And shepherds from the mountain-eaves Look'd down, half-pleased, half-frightened, As dash'd about the drunken leaves The random sunshine lighten'd! Oh, nature first was fresh to men, So youthful and sɔ flexile then, Blow, flute, and stir the stiff-set sprigs, 'Tis vain! in such a brassy age I could not move a thistle; The very sparrows in the hedge Or at the most, when three-parts-sick The passive oxen gaping. |