Ode on the Spring

Lo! where the rosy-bosomed Hours,

Fair Venus' train appear,

Disclose the long-expecting flowers,

And wake the purple year!

The Attic warbler * pours her throat,

Responsive to the cuckoo's note,

The untaught harmony of spring:

While, whispering pleasure as they fly,

Cool Zephyrs thro' the clear blue sky

Their gathered fragrance fling.

Where'er the oak's thick branches stretch

A broader browner shade;

Where'er the rude and moss-grown beeck

O'er-canopies * the glade,

Beside some water's rushy brink

With me the muse shall sit, and think

(At ease reclined in rustic state)

How vain the ardour of the crowd,

How low, how little are the proud,

How indigent the great!

Still is the toiling hand of care:

The panting herds repose:

Yet hark, how thro' the peopled air

The busy murmur glows!

The insect youth are on the wing,

Eager to taste the honied spring,

And float amid the liquid noon:

Some lightly o'er the current skim,

Some shew their gaily_:gilded trim

Quick-glancing to the sun.

To contemplation's sober eye

Such is the race of man:

And they that creep, and they that fly,

Shall end where they began.

Alike the busy and the gay

But flutter thro' life's little day,

In fortune's varying' colours drest…

The second half of the 18^th с. in England is the time of changes in economical, philosophic, social and cultural life of the country. Considerable changes took place in the English literature. Sentimentalism became the main literary trend of the period. The term “sentimental” appeared in 1749, though it was successfully used a few years before the date in epistolary and social domestic novels. The word designated acute receptivity, intense sensitivity & quick reaction on everything that touches heart and soul. Sentimentality presupposed certain individual mood, his/her inclination to reflection & compassion, high enough level of feelings’ evolution, delicate receptivity of ethic. “Sentimental” implied also exalted ability to love, friendship, melancholy, higher excitability and liveliness of nervous system in mood change &person’s behaviour.

The refusal from the Enlightment rationalism and appeal to feeling as a source of human perfection defined English sentimentalism’s way of aesthetics.

Philosophic basis — subjective idealism of G. Berkley & D. Hume (“An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals” (1751) proclaimed such qualities of a human being as kindness, benevolence, philanthropy being innate, and feelings & emotions — fundamental principles of human life, especially of aesthetical life. The development of the sensualistic aesthetics was theoretically formed after the book by English journalist & philosopher Edmund Burke “ A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful” (1757).

First period of sentimentalism was lyrical. Broad religious tolerance, reinforced by the 70-s was rooted in English inflexible deism, which was less Christian than on the continent, which favoured diffusion of disbelief among population, indistinctness of religious doctrines & different sect trends. The imagined, supported by sensitivity & melancholy, set free of signs of artificial classicism, emancipated human’s soul, made usual to look unusual, insignificant - significant. One of the most important themes of sentimental poetry — vanity of life, brevity of its joy & permanency of sorrows, which was best depicted in the “cemetery poetry”. The most prominent representatives of sentimental poetry were:

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