Against the birth of May: and, vested so,

Thou dost appear more gracefully array'd

Than Fashion's worshippers, whose gaudy shows, Fantastical as are a sick man's dreams,

From vanity to costly vanity

Change ofter than the moon. Thy comely dress, From sad to gay returning with the year,

Shall grace thee still till Nature's self shall change.

These are the beauties of thy woodland scene At each return of spring: yet some1 delight Rather to view the change; and fondly gaze On fading colours, and the thousand tints Which Autumn lays upon the varying leaf:

I like them not, for all their boasted hues

Are kin to Sickliness; mortal Decay

Is drinking up their vital juice; that gone, They turn to sear and yellow. Should I praise Such false complexions, and for beauty take

A look consumption-bred? As soon, if gray Were mixt in young Louisa's tresses brown, I'd call it beautiful variety,

And therefore dote on her. Yet I can spy

A beauty in that fruitful change, when comes
The yellow Autumn and the hopes o' the year
Brings on to golden ripeness; nor dispraise
The pure and spotless form of that sharp time,
When January spreads a pall of snow

O'er the dead face of th' undistinguish'd earth.

Then stand I in the hollow comb beneath,

And bless this friendly mount, that weather-fends

My reed-roof'd cottage, while the wintry blast From the thick north comes howling: till the Spring Return, who leads my devious steps abroad,

To climb, as now, to LEWESDON's airy top.

Above the noise and stir of yonder fields

Uplifted, on this height I feel the mind

Expand itself in wider liberty.

The distant sounds break gently on my sense,

Soothing to meditation: so methinks,

Even so, sequester'd from the noisy world,

Could I wear out this transitory being

In peaceful contemplation and calm ease.

But Conscience, which still censures on our acts,

That awful voice within us, and the sense

Of an Hereafter, wake and rouse us up

From such unshaped retirement; which were else A blest condition on this earthly stage.

For who would make his life a life of toil

For wealth, o'erbalanced with a thousand cares;
Or power, which base compliance must uphold;
Or honour, lavish'd most on courtly slaves;
Or fame, vain breath of a misjudging world;
Who for such perishable gaudes would put
A yoke upon his free unbroken spirit,

And gall himself with trammels and the rubs

Of this world's business; so he might stand clear

Of judgment and the tax of idleness

In that dread audit, when his mortal hours

(Which now with soft and silent stealth pace by)

Must all be counted for? But, for this fear,

And to remove, according to our power,

The wants and evils of our brother's state,
"Tis meet we justle with the world; content,
If by our sovereign Master we be found
At last not profitless: for worldly meed,

Given or withheld, I deem of it alike.

From this proud eminence on all sides round

Th' unbroken prospect opens to my view,