Poetical Works of Johnson, Parnell, Gray and Smollett

Ode to Mirth

Parent of joy! heart-easing Mirth!
  Whether of Venus or Aurora born,
  Yet Goddess sure of heavenly birth,
  Visit benign a son of grief forlorn:
  Thy glittering colours gay,
  Around him, Mirth, display,
  And o’er his raptured sense
  Diffuse thy living influence:
  So shall each hill, in purer green array’d,
  And flower adorn’d in new-born beauty glow,
  The grove shall smooth the horrors of the shade,
  And streams in murmurs shall forget to flow.
  Shine, Goddess! shine with unremitted ray,
  And gild (a second sun) with brighter beam our day.
  Labour with thee forgets his pain,
  And aged Poverty can smile with thee;
  If thou be nigh, Grief’s hate is vain,
  And weak the uplifted arm of Tyranny.
  The morning opes on high
  His universal eye,
  And on the world doth pour
  His glories in a golden shower;
  Lo! Darkness trembling ’fore the hostile ray,
  Shrinks to the cavern deep and wood forlorn:
  The brood obscene that own her gloomy sway
  Troop in her rear, and fly the approaching morn;
  Pale shivering ghosts that dread the all-cheering light,
  Quick as the lightning’s flash glide to sepulchral night.
  But whence the gladdening beam
  That pours his purple stream