THE SEASONS. Dat Clemens hyemem, dat Petrus ver cathedratus; THE Continual succession of SEASONS in the human life, by daily presenting to us new scenes, render it agreeable, and, like those of the year, afford us delights by their change, which the choicest of them could not give us by their continuance. In the Spring of life, the gilding of the sunshine, the verdure of the fields, and the variegated paintings of the sky, are so exquisite in the eyes of infants, at their first looking abroad into a new world, as nothing, perhaps, afterwards can equal: the heat and vigour of the succeeding Summer of youth ripens for us new pleasures, the blooming maid, the nightly revel, and the jovial chase the serene Autumn of complete manhood feasts us with the golden harvest of our worldly pursuits; nor is the hoary Winter of old age destitute of its peculiar comforts and enjoyments, of which the recollection and relation of those past, are, perhaps, none of the least: and, at last, Death opens to us a new prospect, from whence we shall, probably, look back upon the diversions and occupations of this world, with the same contempt we do now upon our tops and hobbyhorses, and with the same surprise, that they could ever so much entertain or engage us.-Jenyns. BEHIND the glowing wheels Six jocund Seasons dance, A radiant month in each quick-shifting hand; While buxom Nature feels The grateful changes of the frolick band: Knit in youthful wedlock, holds; A canopy of woven air.-Sir Wm. Jones. : WINTER. High on an Alp of ice he sits enthron'd!-Savage. O WINTER, ruler of th' inverted year, A sliding car, indebted to no wheels, CAULD blew the bitter-biting north Yet cheerfully thou glinted forth Amid the storm, Scarce rear'd above the parent earth There, in thy scanty mantle clad, Thy snawie bosom sunward spread, Thou lifts' thy unassuming head.—The Daisy.—Burns. |