And thus the foremost of the tram: 
Be thine the throne, and thine to reign
  O’er all the varying year! 
But ere thou rulest the Fates command;
That of our chosen rival band
A Sylph shall win thy heart and hand,
  Thy sovereignty to share.

For we, the sisters of a birth,
Do rule by turns the subject earth
  To serve ungrateful man;
But since our varied toils impart
No joy to his capricious heart,
’Tis now ordain’d that human art
  Shall rectify the plan.

Then spake the Sylph of Spring serene,
’Tis I thy joyous heart I ween,
  With sympathy shall move: 
For I with living melody
Of birds in choral symphony,
First wak’d thy soul to poesy,
  To piety and love.

When thou, at call of vernal breeze,
And beck’ning bough of budding trees,
  Hast left thy sullen fire;
And stretch’d thee in some mossy dell. 
And heard the browsing wether’s bell,
Blythe echoes rousing from their cell
  To swell the tinkling quire: 

Or heard from branch of flow’ring thorn
The song of friendly cuckoo warn
  The tardy-moving swain;
Hast bid the purple swallow hail;
And seen him now through ether sail,
Now sweeping downward o’er the vale. 
  And skimming now the plain;

Then, catching with a sudden glance
The bright and silver-clear expanse
  Of some broad river’s stream. 
Beheld the boats adown it glide,
And motion wind again the tide,
Where, chain’d in ice by Winter’s pride,
  Late roll’d the heavy team: 

Or, lur’d by some fresh-scented gale,
That woo’d the moored fisher’s sail
  To tempt the mighty main,
Hast watch’d the dim receding shore,
Now faintly seen the ocean o’er,
Like hanging cloud, and now no more
  To bound the sapphire plain;

Then, wrapt in night the scudding bark,
(That seem’d, self-pois’d amid the dark,
  Through upper air to leap,)
Beheld, from thy most fearful height,
Beneath the dolphin’s azure light
Cleave, like a living meteor bright,
  The darkness of the deep: 

’Twas mine the warm, awak’ning hand
That made thy grateful heart expand,
  And feel the high control
Of Him, the mighty Power, that moves
Amid the waters and the groves,
And through his vast creation proves
  His omnipresent soul.

Or, brooding o’er some forest rill,
Fring’d with the early daffodil,
  And quiv’ring maiden-hair,
When thou hast mark’d the dusky bed,
With leaves and water-rust o’erspread,
That seem’d an amber light to shed
  On all was shadow’d there;

And thence, as by its murmur call’d,
The current traced to where it brawl’d
  Beneath the noontide ray;
And there beheld the checquer’d shade
Of waves, in many a sinuous braid,
That o’er the sunny channel play’d,
  With motion ever gay: