Page:Poems of Nature and Life.djvu/433



Oft, when Zephyr spreads his wing In the moist and melting Spring, And, my window fluttering by, Draws his faint breath to a sigh, While bursting buds and morning dew Recall the days when life was new, Does the dull round that cities know, This round of tasks and habits, grow A weary burden, and I long To quit the tame and tiresome throng For the wide wilderness, and hie To houses only roofed with sky, And to rude life, and would that fate Had suckled me in savage state, Whose chiefest sorrow were, or shame, But when my arrow missed its aim; While, fain to loose the jaded mind From all that ties it to mankind, Far from the dry wastes of the real, I hurry on to worlds ideal.

Then Fancy's children, absent long, Draw near, a half-reluctant throng,