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A WINTER-SONG
Rich wines, flow, flow!
Keen North winds blow,
To rest doth Phoebus sink:
The shaggy bear
Frowns night-blasts near,
Drink, brethren, let us drink!
The wood-fire bright
Spreads cheerful light,
Lo! Sparks, in volumes, fly;
The noble
Provides us wine:
Quaff, brethren, joyously!
The banquet gay
Drives frost away,
And ushers blooming Spring:
Joy’s magic hours
Are crowned with flowers,
While feathered warblers sing.
Songs echo round,
Harps sweetly sound,
We rove through valleys fair,
A virgin-train
Glide o’er the plain,
And grapes luxuriant bear.
Rush wildly forth,
Blasts from the North,
O’er valleys decked with snow!
Yet, gently pass
That sparkling glass,
Whence purples juices flow!
Pain, brown and blue
The haughty shrew,
With supercilioius air!
Yet, Boreas keen,
Shun Hermeline
Who veils her bosom fair!
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COUNTRY LIFE
Happy the man who has the town escaped!
To him the whistling trees, the murmuring brooks,
The shining pebbles, preach
Virtue’s and wisdom’s lore.
The whispering grove a holy temple is
To him, where God draws nigher to his soul;
Each verdant and a shrine,
Whereby he kneels to Heaven.
The nightingale on him sings slumber down,
The nightingale rewakes him, fluting sweet,
When shines the lovely red,
Of morning through the trees.
Then he admires thee in the plain, O God!
In the ascending pomp of the dawning day,
Thee in thy glorious sun,
The worm, the budding branch.
Where coolness gushes, in the waving grass,
Or o’er the flowers streams the fountain, rests:
Inhales the breath of prime,
The gentle airs of eve.
His straw-decked thatch, where doves bask in the sun,
And play and hop, invites to sweeter rest
Than golden halls of state
Or beds of down afford.
To him the plumy people sporting chirp,
Chatter, and whistle, on his basket perch,
And from his quiet hand
Pick crumbs, or peas, or grains.
Oft wanders he alone, and thinks on death;
And in the village churchyard by the graves,
Sits and beholds the cross
Death’s waving garland there.
The stone beneath the elders, where a text
Of scripture teaches joyfully to die,
And with his scythe stands Death,
An angel, too, with palms.
Happy the man who thus hath ‘scaped the town!
Him did an angel bless when he was born,
The cradle of the boy
With flowers celestial strewed.
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Delightfully sound the birdsongs
when the pure angel
who conquered my young heart
wanders through the wood.
Redder bloom the valleys and meadows,
Greener becomes the grass
where the fingers of my lady
Are picking little mayflowers.
Without her, everything is dead.
Blossoms and herbs are wilted;
and no spring sunset
would seem to me as fair and fine.
Darling, lovely woman,
Never wish to flee;
that my heart, as well as this meadow,
might bloom in joy!