To Mr. Barbauld, November 14, 1778 Analysis

1Come, clear thy studious looks awhile,
2'T is arrant treason now
3To wear that moping brow,
4When I, thy empress, bid thee smile.

5What though the fading year
6One wreath will not afford
7To grace the poet's hair,
8Or deck the festal board;

9A thousand pretty ways we'll find
10To mock old Winter's starving reign;
11We'll bid the violets spring again,
12Bid rich poetic roses blow,
13Peeping above his heaps of snow;
14We'll dress his withered cheeks in flowers,
15And on his smooth bald head
16Fantastic garlands bind:
17Garlands, which we will get
18From the gay blooms of that immortal year,
19Above the turning seasons set,
20Where young ideas shoot in Fancy's sunny bowers.

21A thousand pleasant arts we'll have
22To add new feathers to the wings of Time,
23And make him smoothly haste away:
24We'll use him as our slave,
25And when we please we'll bid him stay,
26And clip his wings, and make him stop to view
27Our studies, and our follies too;
28How sweet our follies are, how high our fancies climb.

29We'll little care what others do,
30And where they go, and what they say;
31Our bliss, all inward and our own,
32Would only tarnished be, by being shown.
33The talking restless world shall see,
34Spite of the world we'll happy be;
35But none shall know
36How much we're so,
37Save only Love, and we.

There have been no submitted criqiques, be the first to add one below.