Page:The Farm and Fruit of Old a translation in verse of the 1st and 2nd Georgics of Virgil, by a market-gardener (1862).djvu/9

 

PREFACE.

ndulgence have ye for a gardener's dream,
(A man with native melody unblest,)
That patient toil and love which does its best,
Clouds though they be, may follow the sunbeam?

And in this waning of poetic day,
With all so misty, moonlit, and grotesque,
What harm to quit such medley picturesque,
And chase the sunset of a clearer ray?

Too well I know, by fruitless error taught,
How latent beauty hath fallacious clues,
How difficult to catch, how quick to lose
The mirage of imaginative thought.