When a poet mentions the spring, we know that the zephyrs are about to
whisper, that the groves are to recover their verdure, the linnets to
warble forth their notes of love, and the flocks and herds to frisk over
vales painted with flowers: yet, who is there so insensible of the
beauties of nature, so little delighted with the renovation of the
world, as not to feel his heart bound at the mention of the spring?
When night overshadows a romantick scene, all is stillness, silence, and
quiet; the poets of the grove cease their melody, the moon towers over
the world in gentle majesty, men forget their labours and their cares,
and every passion and pursuit is for a while suspended. All this we know
already, yet we hear it repeated without weariness; because such is
generally the life of man, that he is pleased to think on the time when
he shall pause from a sense of his condition.
When a poetical grove invites us to its covert, we know that we shall
find what we have already seen, a limpid brook murmuring over pebbles, a
bank diversified with flowers, a green arch that excludes the sun, and a
natural grot shaded with myrtles; yet who can forbear to enter the
pleasing gloom to enjoy coolness and privacy, and gratify himself once
more by scenes with which nature has formed him to be delighted?
Many moral sentiments likewise are so adapted to our state, that they
find approbation whenever they solicit it, and are seldom read without
exciting a gentle emotion in the mind: such is the comparison of the
life of man with the duration of a flower, a thought which perhaps every
nation has heard warbled in its own language, from the inspired poets of
the Hebrews to our own times; yet this comparion must always please,
because every heart feels its justness, and every hour confirms it by
example.
Pages:
160
161
162
163
164
165
166
167
168
169
170
171
172
173
174
175
176
177
178
179
180
181
182
183
184