MAY GARLANDS. OME, ye little revellers gay, Or in sunny meadow wide, Gemmed with cowslips in their pride; Bring me now a crown as gay, Feeling nought of earth or sky, Shower or dew, behold they lie, Vernal airs no more to know:- Hearken, children of the May, Now in your glad hour and gay, With their treasures blithe and sweet :- But was nursed by weeping skies. Braced the roots, embalmed the flowers. So, if e'er that second spring Her green robe o'er you shall fling, Must the way of bliss prepare. How should else Earth's flowerets prove Meet for those pure crowns above? Lyra Innocentium. Seek thou the well-known glade, Bring me their buds, to shed Around my dying bed A breath of May, and of the woods' repose; With a reluctant heart, That fain would linger where the bright sun glows. Fain would I stay with thee Alas! this may not be; Yet bring me still the gifts of happier hours; Go where the fountain's breast Catches, in glassy rest, The dim green light that pours through laurel bowers. I know how softly bright, The water-lilies tremble there, e'en now; Go to the pure stream's edge, And from its whispering sedge Bring me those flowers to cool my fevered brow. Then, as in hope's young days, Track thou the antique maze Shedding, in sudden snows, Its faint leaves o'er the emerald turf around: Well know'st thou that fair tree A murmur of the bee Dwells ever in the honey'd lime above: Of all its clustering shower- Gather one woodbine bough, Then from the lattice low Of the bowered cottage which I bade thee mark, Through dim wood-lanes we pass'd, While dews were glancing to the glow-worm's spark: The Last Wish. Haste! to my pillow bear Those fragrant things and fair, Thy hand no more may bind them up at eve→→→ One bright dream round me waft Of life, youth, summer-all that I must leave: And oh! if thou wouldst ask Wherefore thy steps I task, 141 The grove, the stream, the hamlet vale to trace'Tis that some thought of me, When I am gone, may be The spirit bound to each familiar place. I bid mine image dwell (Oh! break not thou the spell!) In the deep wood and by the fountain side; Thou must not, my beloved! Rove where we two have roved, Forgetting her that in her spring-time died! HEMANS. |