As thro' the garden's desert paths I rove, What fond illusions swarm in every grove! How oft, when purple evening tinged the west, We watched the emmet to her grainy nest; Welcomed the wild-bee home on weary wing, Laden with sweets, the choicest of the spring! How oft inscribed, with Friendship's votive rhyme, The bark now silvered by the touch of Time; Soared in the swing, half pleased and half afraid, Thro' sister elms that waved their summer-shade; Or strewed with crumbs yon root-inwoven seat, Childhood's loved group revisits every scene; When o'er the landscape Time's meek twilight steals! The School's lone porch, with reverend mosses grey, Down by yon hazel copse, at evening, blazed The Gipsy's fagot-there we stood and gazed; Gazed on her sun-burnt face with silent awe, Her tattered mantle, and her hood of straw; Her moving lips, her caldron brimming o'er; The drowsy brood that on her back she bore, Imps, in the barn with mousing owlet bred, From rifled roost at nightly revel fed; |