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Home  »  The Book of Elizabethan Verse  »  Richard Lovelace (1618–1658)

William Stanley Braithwaite, ed. The Book of Elizabethan Verse. 1907.

The Grasshopper

Richard Lovelace (1618–1658)

O THOU that swing’st upon the waving hair

Of some well-fillèd oaten beard,

Drunk every night with a delicious tear

Dropt thee from heaven, where thou wert rear’d!

The joys of earth and air are thine entire,

That with thy feet and wings dost hop and fly;

And when thy poppy works, thou dost retire

To thy carved acorn-bed to lie.

Up with the day, the Sun thou welcom’st then,

Sport’st in the gilt plaits of his beams,

And all these merry days mak’st merry men,

Thyself, and melancholy streams.