Quand dans l’air obscurci sévit le rude hiver
Qu’il balaye la neige au plus haut de l’éther,
Le paysan transi de froid et de misère
À l’aspect de ses champs pleure et se désespère :
Il voit surgir des monts jusqu’alors inconnus,
Disparaître la plaine et ses sentiers connus,
Son œil inquisiteur ne voit plus la...
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From “The Seasons: Spring”
BUT happy they! the happiest of their kind!
Whom gentler stars unite, and in one fate
Their hearts, their fortunes, and their beings blend.
’T is not the coarser tie of human laws,
Unnatural oft, and foreign to the mind,
That binds their peace, but harmony itself,
Attuning all their passions into love;
... -
From “The Seasons,” Conclusion
THESE, as they change, Almighty Father, these
Are but the varied God. The rolling year
Is full of thee. Forth in the pleasing Spring
Thy beauty walks, thy tenderness and love.
Wide flush the fields; the softening air is balm;
Echo the mountains round; the forest smiles;
And every sense and every heart is joy... -
From “The Seasons: Autumn”
THE STAG too, singled from the herd where long
He ranged, the branching monarch of the shades,
Before the tempest drives. At first, in speed
He, sprightly, puts his faith; and, roused by fear,
Gives all his swift aerial soul to flight.
Against the breeze he darts, that way the more
To leave the lessening... -
From “The Seasons: Winter”
THE KEENER tempests rise; and fuming dun
From all the livid east, or piercing north,
Thick clouds ascend; in whose capacious womb
A vapory deluge lies, to snow congealed.
Heavy they roll their fleecy world along;
And the sky saddens with the gathered storm.
Through the hushed air the whitening shower descends... -
From Canto I.
The castle hight of Indolence,
And its false luxury;
Where for a little time, alas!
We lived right jollily.O MORTAL man, who livest here by toil,
Do not complain of this thy hard estate;
That like an emmet thou must ever moil,
Is a sad sentence of an ancient date;
And, certes, there is for it... -
From “Alfred,” Act II. Sc. 5.
WHEN Britain first, at Heaven’s command,
Arose from out the azure main,
This was the charter of the land,
And guardian angels sung the strain:
Rule, Britannia, rule the waves!
For Britons never will be slaves.The nations not so blest as thee
Must in their turns to tyrants fall;...