The Farmer's Boy: A Rural Poem Part 9

Nature, we grieve that thou giv'st flowers so gay, Then s.n.a.t.c.hest Gifts thou shew'st so swift away.

A Day's a Rose's Life.--_How quickly meet_, Sweet Flower, _thy Blossom and thy Winding sheet_!

In the _Procession_ of SPRING there is a fine series of allegorical Images.

Advancing SPRING profusely spreads abroad _Flowers of kinds, with sweetest fragrance stor'd_: Where she treads LOVE gladdens every plain; _Delight_ on tip-toe beats her lucid train; Sweet _Hope_ with conscious brow _before_ her flies, Antic.i.p.ating wealth from summer skies.

I. v. 271--6.

Compare now this of LUCRETIUS.

It VER et VENUS et Veneris _praenuntius ante_ Prunatus _graditur_ Zephyrus vestigia propter.

FLORA quibus mater praespergens, ante viai Cuncta coloribus egregiis et odoribus opplet.

DE NAT. RES. L. V. v. 736-9.

Ed. Brindley 1749.

There SPRING, and VENUS, and her Harbinger, Near to her moves the winged Zephyrus, For whom maternal FLORA strews the way _With Flowers of every charming scent and hue_.

Or in the very words of BLOOMFIELD,

Flowers of all hues with sweetest fragrance stor'd.

_Hope_ here occupies the place of _Zephyrus_. DELIGHT on tip-toe supporting the _lucid_ train of _Spring_,--the image and att.i.tude so full of life and beauty,--is our Poet's own. And what Poet, what _Painter_, would not have been proud of it?

In another pa.s.sage,

The splendid raiment of the Spring peeps forth Her universal Green--

This of Lucretius will be found to have much similitude:

Camposque per omnes Florida fulserunt viridami prata colore.

782, 3.

_O'er every plain The flowery meadows beam with verdant hue._

And that exceedingly fine verse,

_All Nature feels her venorating sway_,

calls to mind the ever-memorable exordium of the _Roman_ Poet.

If we admire the imitative force of this line in the epic majesty of Virgilian numbers,

Quadrupedante putrem sonitu qualit ungula campum:

_Shakes the resounding hoof the trembling plain:_

shall we not admire the imitative harmony of this; attun'd certainly with not less felicity to the sweetness of the pastoral reed,

_The green turf trembling as they bound along._

The pause on the first syllable of the verse has been an admir'd beauty in Homer and Milton.

[Greek: Nux ech d'espchsen enchos.] II.

And over them triumphant Death his dart Shook, but delay'd to strike. P.L.

We have this beauty,--coinciding with the best examples, though underiv'd from them,--in a cadence of most pathetic softness.

Joys which the gay companions of her prime Sip, as they drift along the stream of time.

III. v. 169, 70.

The beautiful Description of the Swine and Pigs feeding on fallen Acorns reminds me of a most picturesque one, not now at hand, in GILPIN on _Forest Scenery_.

The turn of this thought,

Say not, I'll come and cheer thy gloomy cell.

III. v. 241, &c.

I believe is from Scripture. Prov. iii. 28. And so I think certainly is that,

'Till Folly's wages, wounds and thorns, they reap.

III. 37.

But the most remarkable of all, and where I had no expectation of finding a similitude, is in near the close of the _Winter_.

Far yet above these wafted clouds are seen (In a remoter sky yet more serene) Others, detach'd in ranges through the air, Spotless as snow, and countless as they're fair; Scatter'd immensely wide from east to west, _The beauteous semblance of a Flock at rest_.

IV. 255--60.

In HERCULES the LION-SLAYER there is this pa.s.sage:

........ Tad epaeluthe piona maela, Ech soianaes anionia mei aulia ie saechsie, Ayiar epeiia soes, mala muriai, akkai ep allais Erchomenai phainonth, osei NEPHE HYDATOENTA 'Hossat' en thrano eisi elaunomena prolepose Aee Noloioio ziae ae Thraekos Boreao.

Ton meni thlis arithmos en aeeri ginei ionion, Oui a.n.u.sis lisa gar ie meia proloioi chulindei Is anemth, iade i alla chorusselai authis ep allois Toss aiei melopisthe zoon epi zthcholi aeei.

Pan dar eneplaesthae pedion, pasaile cheleuthai, Aaeidos erchomenaes.

HAERAKL. LEONTOPH.

Idyll. Theocrito adscriptum. Brunckii a.n.a.lect. I. 360.

........ On came the comely sheep, From feed returning to their pens and fold.

And these the _Kine_, in mult.i.tudes, succeed; One on the other rising to the eye; As watery CLOUDS which in the Heavens are seen, Driven by the south or Thracian _Boreas, And, numberless, along the sky they glide:_ Nor cease; so many doth the powerful Blast Speed foremost, and so many, fleece on fleece, Successive rise, reflecting varied light So still the herds of Kine successive drew A far extended line: and fill'd the plain, And all the pathways, with the coming troop.