Winter! Thou hoary venerable sire,
All richly in thy furry mantle clad;
What thoughts of mirth can feeble age inspire,
To make thy careful wrinkled brow so glad!

Now I see the reason plain,
Now I see thy jolly train:
Snowy-headed Winter leads,
Spring and Summer next succeeds;
Yellow Autumn brings the rear, thou art father of the year.

While from the frosty mellow’d earth
Abounding plenty takes her birth,
The conscious sire exulting sees
The seasons spread their rich increase;
So dusky night and chaos smil’d
On beauteous form, their lovely child.

O fair variety!
What bliss thou dost supply!
The foul brings forth the fair
To deck the changing year,
When our old pleasures die,
Some new one still is nigh;
Oh! fair variety;

Our passions, like the seasons turn;
And now we laugh, and now we mourn.
Britannia late oppress’d with dread,
Hung her declining drooping head:
A better visage now she wears,
And now at once she quits her fears:
Strife and war no more she knows,
Rebel sons nor foreign foes.

Safe beneath her mighty master,
In security she sits;
Plants her loose foundations faster,
And her sorrows past forgets.

Happy isle! The care of Heaven,
To the guardian hero given,
Unrepining still obey him,
Still with love and duty pay him.

Though he parted from thy shore,
While contesting kings attend him;
Could he, Britain, give thee more
Than the pledge he left behind him?