And the cycle closes.

From the honours of the rose
They decline, the rose abuse,
Who, when roses red unclose,
Seek not their own sweets to use;
'Tis with largess, liberal dues,
That the rose discloses.

Taught to wanton, taught to play,
By the young year's wanton flower,
We will take no heed to-day,
Have no thought for thrift this hour;
Thrift, whose uncongenial power
Laws on youth imposes.

Another song, blending the praises of spring with a little pagan vow
to Cupid, has in the original Latin a distinction and purity of
outline which might be almost called Horatian.

THE VOW TO CUPID.

No. 10.

Winter, now thy spite is spent,
Frost and ice and branches bent!
Fogs and furious storms are o'er,
Sloth and torpor, sorrow frore,
Pallid wrath, lean discontent.

Comes the graceful band of May!
Cloudless shines the limpid day,
Shine by night the Pleiades;
While a grateful summer breeze
Makes the season soft and gay.

Golden Love I shine forth to view!
Souls of stubborn men subdue!
See me bend! what is thy mind?
Make the girl thou givest kind,
And a leaping ram's thy due!

O the jocund face of earth,
Breathing with young grassy birth!
Every tree with foliage clad,
Singing birds in greenwood glad,
Flowering fields for lovers' mirth!

Nor is the next far below it in the same qualities of neatness and
artistic brevity.

A-MAYING.

No. 11.

Now the fields are laughing; now the maids
Take their pastime; laugh the leafy glades:
Now the summer days are blooming,
And the flowers their chaliced lamps for love illuming.
Fruit-trees blossom; woods grow green again;
Winter's rage is past: O ye young men,
With the May-bloom shake off sadness!
Love is luring you to join the maidens' gladness.

Let us then together sport and play;
Cytherea bids the young be gay:
Laughter soft and happy voices,
Hope and love invite to mirth when May rejoices.

All the spring is in the lyric next upon my list.

THE RETURN OF SPRING:

No. 12.

Spring returns, the glad new-comer,
Bringing pleasure, banning pain:
Meadows bloom with early summer,
And the sun shines out again:
All sad thoughts and passions vanish;
Plenteous Summer comes to b