Page:The Seasons - Thomson (1791).djvu/84

 Sustain'd alone by providential , Oft, as they weeping eye their infant train, Check their own appetites and give them all.

toil alone they scorn: exalting love, By the great inspir'd, Gives instant courage to the fearful race, And to the simple, art. With stealthy wing, Should some rude foot their woody haunts molest, Amid a neighbouring bush they silent drop, And whirring thence, as if alarm'd, deceive Th'unfeeling school-boy. Hence, around the head Of wandering swain, the white-wing'd plover wheels Her founding flight, and then directly on In long excursion skims the level lawn, To tempt him from her nest. The wild-duck, hence O'er the rough moss, and o'er the trackless waste The heath-hen flutters, pious fraud! to lead The hot pursuing spaniel far astray.

not the Muse asham'd, here to bemoan Her brothers of the grove, by tyrant man Inhuman caught, and in the narrow cage From liberty confin'd, and boundless air. Dull are the pretty slaves, their plumage dull. Ragged, and all its brightening lustre lost; Nor is that sprightly wildness in their notes Which, clear and vigorous, warbles from the beech. Oh then, ye friends of love and love-taught song, Spare the soft tribes, this barbarous art forbear! If on your bosom innocence can win, Music engage, or piety persuade,

let not chief the nightingale lament Her ruin'd care, too delicately fram'd To