But beauty how frail and how fleeting,
The bloom of a fine summer's day!
While worth in the mind o' my Phillis
Will flourish without a decay.
On! bring me one sweet Orange-bough,
To fan my cheek, to cool my brow;
One bough, with pearly blossoms drest,
And bind it, Mother! on my breast!
Go seek the grove along the shore,
Whose odours I must breathe no more,
The grove where every scented tree
Thrills to the deep voice of the sea.
Oh! Love's fond sighs, and fervent prayer
And wild farewell, are lingering there,
Each leaf's light whisper hath a tone,
My faint heart, even in death, would own.
Then bear me thence one bough, to shed
Life's parting sweetness round my head,
And bind it, Mother! on my breast
When I am laid in lonely rest.
ARISE, and speak thy sorrows, Echo, rise;
Here, by this fountain, where thy love did pine,
Whose memory lives fresh to vulgar fame,
Shrined in this yellow flower, that bears his name,
His name revives, and lifts me up from earth;— See, see, the mourning fount, whose springs
Th' untimely fate of that too beauteous boy,
That trophy of self-love, and spoil of nature,
Who (now transform'd into this drooping flower)
Hangs the repentant head back from the stream;
As if it wish'd-would I had never look'd
In such a flattering mirror! O, Narcissus!
Thou that wast once (and yet art) my Narcissus,
Had Echo but been private with thy thoughts,
She would have dropt away herself in tears,
Till she had all turn'd waste, that in her
(As in a true glass) thou mightst have gazed,
And seen thy beauties by more kind reflection.
But self-love never yet could look on truth,
But with blear'd beams; slick flattery and she
Are twin-born sisters, and do mix their eyes,
As if you sever one, the other dies.
Why did the gods give thee a heavenly form
And earthly thoughts to make thee proud of it?
Why do I ask? 'Tis now the known disease
That beauty hath, to bear too deep a sense
Of her own self-conceived excellence.
Oh hadst thou known the worth of Heaven's rich
Thou wouldst have turn'd it to a truer use,
And not (with starved and covetous ignorance)
Pined in continual eyeing that bright gem,
The glance whereof to others had been more
Than to thy famish'd mind the wide world's store.
"For me," she stoop'd, and looking round, Pluck'd a blue harebell from the ground,"For me, whose memory scarce conveys An image of more splendid days, This little flower, that loves the lea,
May well my simple emblem be;
It drinks heaven's dew, blithe as the rose
That in the king's own garden grows;
And when I place it in my hair,
Allan, a bard is bound to swear
He ne'er saw coronet sc fair."
SWEET lavender! I love thy flower
Of meek and modest blue,
Which meets the morn and evening hour,
The storm, the sunshine, and the shower,
And changeth not its hue.
In cottage-maid's parterre thou'rt seen. In simple touching grace;
And in the garden of the queen,
'Midst costly plants and blossoms sheen, Thou also hast a place.
with bright and peerless bloom,
Attracted many eyes;
But while her glories and perfume
Expire before brief summer's doom,
Thy fragrance never dies.
Thou art not like the fickle train
Our adverse fates estrange;
Who, in the day of grief and pain,
Are found deceitful, light, and vain,
For thou dost never change.
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