Hail, rustic tree! for, though November’s wind
Has thrown thy verdant mantle to the ground:
Yet Nature, to thy vocal inmates kind,
With berries red thy matron-boughs has crown’d
Thee do I envy: for, bright April show’rs
Will bid again thy fresh green leaves expand;
And May, light floating in a cloud of flow’rs,
Will cause thee to re-bloom with magic hand.
But, on _my_ spring, when genial dew drops fell,
Soon did life’s north-wind curdle them with frost;
And, when my summer-blossom op’d its bell,
In blight and mildew was its beauty lost.
Before adducing other specimens of his talents, it seems proper to give
some account of the poet; and it can scarcely be better related than in
the following