‘NOT now shall I sing of my sports in Spring,
But the golden hours and gay,’
Sang the Breeze, ‘when I, a wild lover, hie
With the Summer flowers to play.
’When I tiptoe go to the pansy, tho’
She wag to and fro her head,
She yet likes, I know, my kisses, and so
Is kist on her low green bed.
‘The rose newly born, albeit she’s sworn
Her lover shall mourn, I woo,
And escape untorn by her pointed thorn,
And never a scorn may rue.
‘The pink she may shrink at my touch, I think,
When her sweets I drink in glee,
At the theft she’ll wink, and a kindly blink,
Will the sweet-mouth’d pink throw me.
‘That snowy white may, the lily I sway,
And when I essay, love stirred,
In my own wild way with the saint to play,
No cruel Nay is heard.
’When I in my zeal to the poppy steal,
Tho’ she’d fain conceal her flame,
Yet she’ll rock and reel with feeling I feel,
Nor seek my zeal to blame.
‘The woodbine too—nay, all blooms I woo
In the fields or bowers, and O,
And the mad pranks we will play, and the glee,
And the golden hours, we know!’