Already sings the nightingale.

II.

Mournful is thine approach to me,

O Spring, thou chosen time of love!

What agitation languidly

My spirit and my blood doth move,

What sad emotions o'er me steal

When first upon my cheek I feel

The breath of Spring again renewed,

Secure in rural quietude -

Or, strange to me is happiness?

Do all things which to mirth incline.

And make a dark existence shine

Inflict annoyance and distress

Upon a soul inert and cloyed? -

And is all light within destroyed?

III.

Or, heedless of the leaves' return

Which Autumn late to earth consigned,

Do we alone our losses mourn

Of which the rustling woods remind?

Or, when anew all Nature teems,

Do we foresee in troubled dreams

The coming of life's Autumn drear.

For which no springtime shall appear?

Or, it may be, we inly seek,

Wafted upon poetic wing,

Some other long-departed Spring,

Whose memories make the heart beat quick

With thoughts of a far distant land,

Of a strange night when the moon and -

IV.

'Tis now the season! Idlers all,

Epicurean philosophers,

Ye men of fashion cynical,

Of Levshin's school ye followers,(67)