Classic Poem

Happy's the man whose pleasant labours with the lark
Salute the opening of the radiant east;
Who, cheerful as the sun, begins his task
Of cultivating Nature's plenteous gifts,
Without a certain hope, except in heav'n;
Who in his nostrils snuffs the morning dew,
And takes the physic of the op'ning ground;
Yet feels no guilty love annoy his rest,
No lust of lawless gain to make him rise
And hammer mischiefs for a sleeping man;
Who neither spurs nor spares his beast too far,
But makes him serve the purpose heav'n designed;
Whose team with bells to him impart a joy
Like that old soldiers feel when hostile fire
Deals death like fate, and makes the coward run
Or die, with apprehensions vast and strange:
Or as the lover feels, when Byblis first,
Agreed to crown him monarch of her joys,
Lies sheltered only in her shift below him.