nnet, to a nightingale, says:

Sweet bird, that sing'st away the early hours
Of winters past or coming void of care,
Well pleased with delights which present are,
Fair seasons, budding sprays, sweet-smelling flowers;
To rocks, to springs, to rills, from leafy bowers
Thou thy Creator's goodness dost declare,
And what dear gifts on thee He did not spare,
A stain to human sense in sin that lowers,
What soul can be so sick which by thy songs
Attir'd in sweetness, sweetly is not driven
Quite to forget earth's turmoils, spites, and wrongs?

He greets Spring:

Sweet Spring, thou turn'st with all thy goodly train
Thy head with flames, thy mantle bright with flowers;
The zephyrs curl the green locks of the plain,
The clouds for joy in pearls weep down their showers.

Robert Blair (1746) sings in _The Grave_:

Oh, when my friend and I
In some thick wood have wander'd heedless on,
Hid from the vulgar eye, and sat us down
Upon the sloping cowslip-cover'd bank,
Where the pure limpid stream has slid along
In grateful errors through the underwood,
Sweet murmuring; methought the shrill-tongu'd
thrush
Mended his song of love, the sooty blackbird
Mellowed his pipe and soften'd every note,
The eglantine smell'd sweeter and the rose
Assum'd a dye more deep, whilst ev'ry flower
Vied with its fellow plant in luxury
Of dress. Oh! then the longest summer's day
Seem'd too, too much in haste, still the full heart
Had not imparted half; half was happiness
Too exquisite to last--Of joys departed
Not to return, how painful the remembrance!

The great painter of Nature among the poets was James Thomson. He was
not original, but followed Pope, who had lighted up the seasons in a
dry, dogmatic way in _Windsor Forest_, and pastoral poems, and after
the publication of his _Winter_ the taste of the day carried him on.
His deep and sentimental affection for Nature was mixed up with piety
and moralizing. He said in a letter to his friend Paterson:

Retirement and Nature are more and more my passion every day; and
now, even now, the charming time comes on; Heaven is just on the
point, or rather in the very act, of giving earth a green gown.
The voice of the nightingale is heard in our lane. You must know
that I have enlarged my rural domain ... walled, no, no! paled in
about as much as my garden consisted of before, so that the walk
runs r