Page:The Poems of John Dyer (1903).djvu/27

And every neighb'ring hedge I greet,25
With honey-suckles smelling sweet.
Now o'er the daisy-meads I stray,
And meet with, as I pace my way,
Sweetly shining on the eye,
A riv'let gliding smoothly by,30
Which shows with what an easy tide
The moments of the happy glide:
Here, finding pleasure after pain,
Sleeping, I see a weary'd swain,
While his full scrip lies open by,35
That does his healthy food supply.
Happy swain! sure happier far
Than lofty kings and princes are!
Enjoy sweet sleep, which shuns the crown,
With all its easy beds of down.40
The sun now shows his noon-tide blaze,
And sheds around me burning rays.
A little onward, and I go
Into the shade that groves bestow,
And on green moss I lay me down,45
That o'er the root of oak has grown;
Where all is silent, but some flood,
That sweetly murmurs in the wood;
But birds that warble in the sprays,
And charm ev'n Silence with their lays.50
Oh! pow'rful Silence! how you reign
In the poet's busy brain!
His num'rous thoughts obey the calls
Of the tuneful water-falls;
Like moles, whene'er the coast is clear,55
They rise before thee without fear,
And range in parties here and there.
Some wildly to Parnassus wing,
And view the fair Castalian spring,