The Mulberry Garden

When in full pride autumnal fields appear, And ripen'd plenty loads the smiling year, With grassy honours cloaths the verdant plain, And golden harvests wave their bending grain, Lead me where trees, in lengthening ranks display'd, Please with their fruit, and solace with their shade; Where dewy mulberries their refreshment lend, And thro' the grove with burthen'd boughs extend, The spreading leaves with salutary food Sustain the tender silk-worm's toiling brood, Whose labour'd webs the shady verdure crown, And dress their surface with a shining down. Such on Acanthus' woolly leaves are bred, And where their silken groves the Seres spread.

Lo! on the trees that bend with clustering weight, The juicy berries swell in purple state. Not apples that Alcinous' gardens bear, The melting plumb, nor fam'd Crustumian pear; Nor fruits of golden, or transparent rind, In relish equal this delicious kind. The careful dames a plenteous wine produce, And brew with mingling spice the pleasing juice. The Rhetic grape not purer nectar yields, Nor the proud growth of rich Falernian fields. Let the cool draught my thirsty veins supply, When sultry Sirius taints the fervid sky, Thy gifts, O Bacchus, more intemperate prove, And to rash heats th' unruly passions move. By wine enflam'd young Ammon basely spilt His friend's warm gore, an unexampled guilt. Provok'd by wine the Centaurs heated train Presum'd with blood the bridal board to stain. Wine arm'd with rage the mad Ciconian crew, Whose hands profane the sacred Thracian flew. Anacreon's fate its mischiefs shall enroll, And direful Circe's fascinating bowl. With softer draughts this temperate liquor ply, Nor fear a threatening from its sanguine die: A borrow'd tincture, for, with native white, The pendant berries first allur'd the sight, 'Till hapless Pyramus, by love betray'd, Found the torn mantle of th' expected maid: Mistaken omen! and, with fatal haste, On the drawn steel his blooming body cast. The snowy fruit, that there untainted grew, Wash'd with his gore, forsook their silver hue, Their swelling pores receive a deepening stain, And still the lover's memory they retain. For, as the circling year with fruit returns, The pitying tree in graceful sable mourns.

Ye fair, who oft, beneath its verdure plac'd, In sultry hours this cooling berry taste; When, with warm lips, you press the purple dew, And on your snowy hands the print you view; To let your generous pity more appear, Dilute the harmless crimson with a tear.