To Mr. Barbauld
Come, clear
thy studious looks awhile,
'T is arrant
treason now
To wear that
moping brow,
When I, thy empress, bid thee
smile.
What though the
fading year
One wreath will
not afford
To grace the
poet's hair,
Or deck the festal
board;
A thousand pretty ways
we'll find
To mock old Winter's starving reign;
We'll bid the violets spring again,
Bid rich poetic roses blow,
Peeping above his heaps of snow;
We'll dress his withered cheeks in
flowers,
And on his smooth bald head
Fantastic garlands bind:
Garlands, which we will get
From the gay blooms of that immortal year,
Above the turning seasons
set,
Where young ideas shoot in Fancy's sunny bowers.
A thousand pleasant arts we'll have
To add new feathers to the wings of Time,
And make him smoothly haste away:
We'll use him as our slave,
And when we please we'll bid him stay,
And clip his wings, and make him stop to view
Our studies, and our follies too;
How sweet our follies are, how high our fancies climb.
We'll little care what others do,
And where they go, and what they say;
Our bliss, all inward and our own,
Would only tarnished be, by being shown.
The talking restless world
shall see,
Spite of the world we'll
happy be;
But none shall know
How much we're so,
Save
only Love, and we.
