APOLLO Which of the fairest three

      Today will ride with me?

      My steeds are all pawing at the threshold of the morn:

      Which of the fairest three

      Today will ride with me

      Across the gold Autumn’s whole Kingdom of corn?

      THE GRACES all answer I will, I – I – I -

      O O young Apollo let me fly

      Along with thee,

      I I will – I, I, I,

      The many wonders see

      I – I – I – I – And thy lyre shall never have a slackened string

      I, I, I, I,

      Thro the golden day will sing.

      The sun, with his great eye,

      Sees not so much as I;

      And the moon, all silver-proud,

      Might as well be in a cloud.

      And O the spring – the spring!

      I lead the life of a king!

      Couch’d in the teeming grass,

      I spy each pretty lass.

      I look where no one dares,

      And I stare where no one stares,

      And when the night is nigh,

      Lambs bleat my lullaby.

      O blush not so! O blush not so!

      Or I shall think you knowing;

      And if you smile the blushing while,

      Then maidenheads are going.

      There’s a blush for won’t, and a blush for shan’t,

      And a blush for having done it:

      There’s a blush for thought and a blush for naught,

      And a blush for just begun it.

      O sigh not so! O sigh not so!

      For it sounds of Eve’s sweet pippin;

      By these loosen’d lips you have tasted the pips

      And fought in an amorous nipping.

      Will you play once more at nice-cut-core,

      For it only will last our youth out,

      And we have the prime of the kissing time,

      We have not one sweet tooth out.

      There’s a sigh for yes, and a sigh for no,

      And a sigh for I can’t bear it!

      O what can be done, shall we stay or run?

      O cut the sweet apple and share it!

      “Among the rest a shepheard (though but young

      Yet hartned to his pipe) with all the skill

      His few yeeres could, began to fit his quill.”

      The poetry of earth is never dead:

      When all the birds are faint with the hot sun,

      And hide in cooling trees, a voice will run

      From hedge to hedge about the new-mown mead;

      That is the Grasshopper’s – he takes the lead

      In summer luxury, – he has never done

      With his delights; for when tired out with fun

      He rests at ease beneath some pleasant weed.

      The poetry of earth is ceasing never:

      On a lone winter evening, when the frost

      Has wrought a silence, from the stove there shrills

      The Cricket’s song, in warmth increasing ever,

      And seems to one in drowsiness half lost,

      The Grasshopper’s among some grassy hills.

      Where’s the Poet? show him! show him,

      Muses nine! that I may know him!

      ’Tis the man who with a man

      Is an equal, be he King,

      Or poorest of the beggar-clan,

      Or any other wondrous thing

      A man may be ‘twixt ape and Plato;

      ’Tis the man who with a bird,

      Wren or Eagle, finds his way to

      All its instincts; he hath heard

      The Lion’s roaring, and can tell

      What his horny throat expresseth,

      And to him the Tiger’s yell

      Comes articulate and presseth

      On his ear like mother tongue.

      Oh, I am frighten’d with most hateful thoughts!

      Perhaps her voice is not a nightingale’s,

      Perhaps her teeth are not the fairest pearl;

      Her eye-lashes may be, for aught I know,

      Not longer than the mayfly’s small fan-horns;

      There may not be one dimple on her hand;

      And freckles many; ah! a careless nurse,

      In haste to teach the little thing to walk,

      May have crumpt2 up a pair of Dian’s legs,

      And warpt the ivory of a Juno’s neck.

      Old Meg she was a gipsy,

      And liv’d upon the moors:

      Her