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