To Mr. Barbauld, November 14, 1778
To Mr. Barbauld, November 14, 1778
Original Text
The Works of Anna Lætitia Barbauld, Volume I (London: Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, Brown, and Green, Paternoster-Row, 1825), pp. 134-36. PR 4057 B7 1825 v.1 Robarts Library.
1 Come, clear thy studious looks awhile,
2 'T is arrant treason now
3 To wear that moping brow,
4 When I, thy empress, bid thee smile.
5 What though the fading year
6 One wreath will not afford
7 To grace the poet's hair,
8 Or deck the festal board;
9 A thousand pretty ways we'll find
10 To mock old Winter's starving reign;
11 We'll bid the violets spring again,
12 Bid rich poetic roses blow,
13 Peeping above his heaps of snow;
14 We'll dress his withered cheeks in flowers,
15 And on his smooth bald head
16 Fantastic garlands bind:
17 Garlands, which we will get
18 From the gay blooms of that immortal year,
19 Above the turning seasons set,
20Where young ideas shoot in Fancy's sunny bowers.
21 A thousand pleasant arts we'll have
22 To add new feathers to the wings of Time,
23 And make him smoothly haste away:
24 We'll use him as our slave,
25 And when we please we'll bid him stay,
26 And clip his wings, and make him stop to view
27 Our studies, and our follies too;
28How sweet our follies are, how high our fancies climb.
29 We'll little care what others do,
30 And where they go, and what they say;
31 Our bliss, all inward and our own,
32 Would only tarnished be, by being shown.
33 The talking restless world shall see,
34 Spite of the world we'll happy be;
35 But none shall know
36 How much we're so,
37 Save only Love, and we.
Publication Start Year
1825
RPO poem Editors
Ian Lancashire
RPO Edition
RPO 1998.