Page:The Seasons - Thomson (1791).djvu/92

That nameless spirit of etherial joy,
Unutterable happiness! which love, 945
Alone bellows, and on a favour'd few.
Meantime you gain the height, from whose fair brow
The bursting prospect spreads immense around;
And snatch'd o'er hill and dale, and wood and lawn,
And verdant field, and darkening heath between,950
And villages embosom'd soft in trees,
And spiry towns by surging columns mark'd
Of household smoak, your eye excursive roams:
Wide-stretching from the Hall, in whose kind haunt
The Hospitable Genius lingers still, 955
To where the broken landskip, by degrees,
Ascending, roughens into ridgy hills;
O'er which the cambrian mountains, like far clouds
That skirt the blue horizon, dusky rise.

Flush'd by the spirit of the genial year, 960
Now from the virgin's cheek a fresher bloom
Shoots', less and less, the live carnation round;
Her lips blush deeper sweets; she breathes of youth
The shining moisture swells into her eyes,
In brighter flow; her wishing bosom heaves, 965
With palpitations wild; kind tumults seize
Her veins, and all her yielding soul is love.
From the keen gaze her lover turns away,
Full of the dear ecstatic power, and sick
With sighing languishment. Ah then, ye fair!970
Be greatly cautious of your sliding hearts:
Dare not th' infectious sigh; the pleading look,
Down-cast, and low, in meek submission drest,
But full of guile. Let not the fervent tongue,
Prompt to deceive, with adulation smooth,975
Gain on your purpos'd will. Nor in the bower,

Where