The mountain snows are all dissolv'd, The circling planets' constant rounds Renew the verdant year. But, ah! when once our transient bloom, The spring of life, is o'er, That rosy season takes its flight, And must return no more. Yet judge by reason's sober rules, From false opinion free, And mark how little pilfering years Each moral pleasure of the heart, The vain coquet, whose empty pride A fading face supplies, May justly dread the wintry gloom, Where all its glory dies. Leave such a ruin to deplore, To fading forms confined: Amidst the universal change, It views, unmov'd, the sithe of Time Fix'd on its own eternal frame, Eternal are its joys; While, borne on transitory wings, Each mortal pleasure flies. While every short-lived flower of sense Destructive years consume, Through Friendship's fair enchanting walks, Unfading myrtles bloom. Nor with the narrow bounds of time But, lengthen'd through the vale of death, TO WISDOM. BY THE SAME. THE solitary bird of night Through the pale shades now wings his flight, In philosophic gloom he lay, Beneath his ivy bower. With joy I hear the solemn sound Which midnight echoes waft around, And sighing gales repeat; And faithful to thy summons bend She loves the cool, the silent eve, Beneath the lunar ray: Here Folly drops each vain disguise, O! Pallas, queen of every art, "That glads the sense, or mends the heart," Bless'd source of purer joys; In every form of beauty bright, To thy unspotted shrine I bow; Not fortune's gem, ambition's plume, Be objects of my prayer: The dull rewards of care. To me thy better gifts impart, By studious thought refined: For wealth, the smiles of glad content; When fortune drops her gay parade, Unchanged is thy immortal prize, In undecaying bloom. By thee protected, I defy The coxcomb's sneer, the stupid lie Of ignorance and spite; Alike contemn the leaden fool, And all the pointed ridicule Of undiscerning wit. From envy, hurry, noise, and strife, Pursue thee to thy peaceful groves, He bade Ilissus' tuneful stream |