Poetry Archives

Roseate colours on heaven’s high arch
   Are beginning to mix with the blue and the gray,
Sol now commences his wonderful march,
   And the forests’ wing’d denizens sing from the spray.
      Gaily the rose
      Is seen to unclose
   Each of her leaves to the brightening ray.
      Waves on the lake
      Rise, sparkle, and break:
O Venus, O Venus, thy shrine is prepar’d,
   Far down in the valley o’erhung by the grove;
Where, all the day, Philomel warbles, unscar’d,
   Her silver-ton’d ditty of pleasure and love.

Innocence smiling out-carrols the lark,
   And the bosom of guilt becomes tranquil again;
Nightmares and visions, the fiends of the dark,
   Have abandon’d the blood and have flown from the brain.
         Higher the sun
         Up heaven has run,
   Beaming so fierce that we feel him with pain;
         Man, herb, and flower,
         Droop under his power.
O Venus, O Venus, thy shrine is prepar’d,
   Far down in the valley o’erhung by the grove
Where, all the day, Philomel warbles, unscar’d,
   Her silver-ton’d ditty of pleasure and love.