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