SPRING.

THE ARGUMENT.,

The subject proposed. Inscribed to the Countess of Hertford. The Season is described as it affects the various parts of nature, ascending from the lower to the higher; and mixed with digressions arising from the subject. Its influence on inanimate matter, on vegetables, on brute animals, and last on man : concluding with a dissuasive from the wild and irregular passion of love opposed to that of a pure and happy kind.

SPRING.

COME, gentle Spring, ethereal mildness, come;
And from the bosom of yon dropping cloud,
While music wakes around, veil'd in a shower
Of shadowing roses, on our plains descend.*

O Hertford, fitted or to shine in courts
With unaffected grace, or walk the plain
With innocence and meditation join'd

5

* This poetical allusion to the fall of flowers from the clouds has been frequently employed by Oriental poets. In a poem of Calidira, when the King of Dilipa offers to sacrifice his life, instead of that of the cow Nandini, to Siva's Lion, which guarded the sacred Cedar of Parvati, his deliverance from expected death, and the breaking the spell by the immortals who applauded his fidelity, was preceded by a shower of celestial flowers. In another poem, "The Birth of Uma," the poet thus announces the auspicious day,

"Its skies beaming fair;

No cloud of earth's dust ever soil'd its pure air:
Loud conch's swelling blast, follow'd close by sweet flowers,
Rain'd down from glad skies, usher'd in its gay hours."

But the beauty and delicacy of the picture, which our author presents to the mind, far surpasses the simple description of such a shower by those with whom the same idea has originated. It displays the goddess descending in all the loveliness and freshness of youth, so shaded, that the veil of roses, whilst it reveals the gracefulness of her form, does not violate that modesty which is the most engaging feature of the age she represents. The whole is one of those happy conceptions which can rarely be surpassed.

B