Chapter LXXVII

What pride the season takes in his gay flowers!
How the dead year mourns for his withered leaves!
The lover sadly looks on desolate bowers,
No song re-echoes to the verse he weaves:
These all are sad, but promise gilds their death;
Their notes of woe but swell the spring’s new joy;
But, ’tis more pitiful, when the very breath,
Which was our life, seems but the summer’s toy:
With lifted hands, vain man implores the skies;
Curses the sometime joy, the nurse of woe,
The bliss whose unfelt want erst caused no sighs;
His pilgrimage had, once, less grief, less show:
But no; lost love exalts, in saddening, man,
While heartless plodding but degrades his span.