The Seasons
Get it in Sphinx
Coming soon to iPhone and Android. Join the waitlist to hear when Sphinx opens.
The opening
SPRING.
The Argument.
The subject proposed. Inscribed to the Countess of Hartford. This Season is described as it affects the various parts of Nature, ascending from the lower to the higher; and mixed with digressions arising from the subject. Its influence on inanimate Matter, on Vegetables, on brute Animals, and last on Man; concluding with a dissuasive from the wild and irregular passion of Love, opposed to that of a pure and happy kind.
COME, gentle Spring, æthereal Mildness, come; And from the bosom of yon dropping cloud, While music wakes around, veil’d in a shower Of shadowing roses, on our plains descend!
O Hartford, fitted, or to shine in courts With unaffected grace, or walk the plain With innocence and meditation join’d In soft assemblage, listen to my song, Which thy own Season paints! when Nature all Is blooming, and benevolent like thee.
The whole book is in the Sphinx app.
About this edition
- The words
- The author's text, copied word for word.
- Copied from
- Left out
- The source website's menus, layout and notices, in 2 places
- Page numbers and running heads from the printed pages
- Notes and pages added by translators, editors or publishers, in 3 places
- A preface, foreword or afterword
- The title page and opening pages before chapter 1, in 2 places
- Other material that isn't the author's, in 5 places
- Closing line "THE END."