New year's day is over and spent,

Ill or well, I must be content!
⁠Even my lily's asleep, I vow:
Wake up—here's a friend I've pluckt you!
See—call this flower a heart's-ease now!
And something rare, let me instruct you,
Is this—with petals triply swollen,
Three times spotted, thrice the pollen,
While the leaves and parts that witness, The old proportions and their fitness,
Here remain, unchanged, unmoved now—
So, call this pampered thing improved now
Suppose there 's a king of the flowers
And a girl-show held in his bowers—
"Look ye, buds, this growth of ours,"
Says he, "Zanze from the Brenta,
I have made her gorge polenta Till both cheeks are near as bouncing
As her . . . name there's no pronouncing!
See this heightened colour too—
For she swilled Breganze wine
Till her nose turned deep carmine—
'Twas but white when wild she grew And only by this Zanze's eyes
Of which we could not change the size,
The magnitude of what's achieved
Otherwise, may be perceived!"

Oh what a drear, dark close to my poor day!
How could that red sun drop in that blackcloud!
Ah, Pippa, morning's rule is moved away,
Dispensed with, never more to be allowed!
Day's turn is over: now arrives the night's.
Oh, Lark, be day's apostle