I make not my division of the hours By dials, clocks, or waking birds’ acclaim, Nor measure seasons by the reigning flowers, The spring’s green glori… - Patrick Moloney

Why dost thou like a Roman vestal make The whole long year unmarriageable May,
And, like the phoenix, no companion take To share the wasteful burthen of decay?
See this rich climate, where the airs that blow Are heavenly suspirings, and the skies
Steep day from head to heel in summer glow, And moons make mellow mornings as they rise;
As brides white-veiled that come to marry earth, Now each mist-morning sweet July attires,
Now moon-night mists are not of earthly birth, But silver smoke blown down from heavenly fires.
Skies kiss the earth, clouds join the land and sea,
All Nature marries, only thou art free.

Thy throne is ringed by amorous cavaliers, And all the air is heavy with the sound
Of tiptoe compliment, whilst anxious fears Strike dumb the lesser satellites around.
One clasps thy hand, another squires thy chair, Some bask in light shed from the eyes of thee,
Some taste the perfume shaken from thy hair, Some watch afar their worshipped deity.
All have their orbits, and due distance keep, As round the sun concentric planets move;
Smiles light yon lord, whilst I, at distance, weep In the sad twilight of uncertain love.
’Thwart thee, my sun, how many a mincer slips,
Whose constant transits make for me eclipse.

Know that the age of Pyrrha is long passed, And though thy form is eternized in stone,
The sculptor’s doings cannot Time outlast, Nor Beauty live save but in blood and bone;
Though new Pygmalions should again arise Idolatrous of images like thee,
Time the iconoclast e’en stone destroys, As steadfast rocks are splintered by the sea.
Thou shouldst indeed a hamadryad be, Inhabiting some knotted oak alone,
And so revive the worship of the Tree Which, by succession, outlives barren stone.
Though thus transformed still worshippers would woo,
As Daphne-laurels poets yet pursue.