To Mrs. Charles Fox

Now the old trees are striving to be young,
And the gay mosses of the Christmas days
To the fresh primrose must forego their praise
Now every flower by vernal poets sung,
And every bird the bursting woods among,
And all the many-dappled banks and braes,
Recal remembrance of immortal lays,
But speak to me in a forgotten tongue.
Yea, dearest lady, they do speak to me
As to a banish'd man that hath forgot
Almost his mother's language, and cannot, .
Without sore pain and stress of memory,
Reply to words that yet he hears with joy,
And by their strangeness make him half a boy.