Page:The Seasons - Thomson (1791).djvu/74

 She pours ten thousand delicacies, herbs, And fruits, as numerous as the drops of rain, Or beams that gave them birth: shall he, fair form! Who wears sweet smiles, and looks erect on heaven, E'er stoop to mingle with the prowling herd, And dip his tongue in gore? The beast of prey, Blood-stain'd, deserves to bleed; but you, ye flocks What have you done; ye peaceful people, what, To merit death? you, who have given us milk In luscious streams, and lent us your own coat Against the winter's cold? And the plain ox, That harmless, honest, guileless animal, In what has he offended? he whose toil, Patient and ever-ready, clothes the land With all the pomp of harvest? shall he bleed, And struggling groan beneath the cruel hands Even of the clown he feeds? and that, perhaps, To swell the riot of th' autumnal feast Won by his labour? Thus the feeling heart Would tenderly suggest: but 'tis enough, In this late age, adventurous, to have touch'd Light on the numbers of the Samian sage. High forbids the bold presumptuous strain, Whose wisest will has fix'd us in a state That must not yet to pure perfection rise.

when the first soul torrent of the brooks, Swell'd with the vernal rains, is ebb'd away; And, whitening, down their mossy tinctur'd stream Descends the billowy foam: now is the time While yet the dark brown water aids the guile, To tempt the trout. The well-dissembled fly, The rod fine-tapering with elastic spring, Snatch'd, from the hoary steed the floating line, And