Say, Father Thames, for thou hast seen Full many a sprightly race Disporting on thy margent green The paths of pleasure trace, Who foremost now delight to cleave With pliant arm thy glassy wave?

PROMETHEUS (1774) Cover thy spacious heavens, Zeus, With clouds of mist, And, like the boy who lops The thistles' heads, Disport with oaks and mountain-peaks; Yet thou must leave My earth still standing; My cottage too, which was not raised by thee, Leave me my hearth, Whose kindly glow

His exercises are from his childhood ingenious, manly, decent, and such as tend still to wit, valour, activity: and if (as seldom) he descend to disports of chance, his games shall never make him either pale with fear or hot with desire of gain.

Thou shalt behold today the celestial weapons of blazing beauty, shot by me, look like flashes of lightning disporting amid the clouds in the sky.

Loose to the wind their airy garments flew, Thin glittering textures of the filmy dew, Dipped in the richest tincture of the skies, Where light disports in ever-mingling dyes, While every beam new transient colours flings, Colours that change whene'er they wave their wings.

The crystal clear waters of this wonderful spring, or more properly called lake, gush in immense volumes seemingly from the very centre of the earth, spreading out until wide and deep enough to float a great navy, and are so transparent that multitudes of fishes are seen disporting among marine plants and shells plainly discernible hundreds of feet below.

] Last week at the preparatory school Where Frederick learns how not to be a fool, Where he disports at ease with Greek and Latin, And mathematics too is fairly pat in On Tuesday morn, the subject being Greek (It always is on that day in the week), Our Frederick, biting hard, as youngsters do, Bit a Greek root and cleft it clean in two.