to the recipient of a collection of early poems
So here they are! You have them now!—
These artless, toil-less songs somehow
Sprung from a brookside meadow.
With youth’s sweet pain, in love, aflame,
I played the young man’s ancient game,
And thus I sang its credo.
Sing, you who cannot help but sing
Upon a pretty day of spring;
And youth enlists their fable.
The poet squints, far off, for whom
Hygienic calm has pressed its thumb
Upon his parted eyeball.
Half cross-eyed and half wise, he peers—
Your bliss incites a few wet tears,
He wails in clause and meter.
He listens to his own good sense,
Supplying his best eloquence,
Knows the brief joys are sweeter.
You sigh, and sing, and melt, and kiss,
And shout with joy: the close abyss
Unknowingly disparage.
Escape the field, the sun, the rill,
Slink off, as if in winter’s chill,
To seek the hearth of marriage.
*
You laugh at me and call me fool;
The fox who lost his tail would school
Us all to like curtailment.
But here the tale must surely fail:
This honest fox, snared by the tail,
Warns you from such beguilement.
1770