In these recesses deign to dwell
With me in yonder moss-clad cell:
Then shall my reed successful tune the lay,
In numbers wildly warbling as they stray
Through the glad banks of Forth, of Tweed, and Tay.
THE TOWN AND COUNTRY CONTRASTED.
IN AN EPISTLE TO A FRIEND.
FROM noisy bustle, from contention free,
Far from the busy town I careless loll;
Not like swain Tityrus, or the bards of old,
Under a beechen, venerable shade,
But on a furzy heath, where blooming broom
And thorny whins the spacious plains adorn.
Here health sits smiling on my youthful brow;
For ere the sun beams forth his earliest ray,
And all the east with yellow radiance crowns;
Ere dame Aurora, from her purple bed,
'Gins with her kindling blush to paint the sky;
The soaring lark, morn's cheerful harbinger,
And linnet joyful, fluttering from the bush,
Stretch their small throats in vocal melody,
To hail the dawn, and drowsy sleep exhale
From man, frail man! on downy softness stretch'd.
Such pleasing scenes Edina cannot boast;
For there the slothful slumber seal'd mine eyes,
Till nine successive strokes the clock had knell'd.
There, not the lark, but fish-wives' noisy screams,
And inundations plunged from ten house height,
With smell more fragrant than the spicy groves
Of Indus fraught with all her orient stores,
Roused me from sleep-not sweet refreshing sleep,
But sleep infested with the burning sting
Of bug infernal, who the live-long night
With direst suction sipp'd my liquid gore.
There, gloomy vapours in our zenith reign'd,
And fill'd with irksome pestilence the air.
There, lingering sickness held his feeble court,
Rejoicing in the havoc he had made;
And death, grim death! with all his ghastly train,
Watch'd the broke slumbers of Edina's sons.
Hail, rosy health! thou pleasing antidote
'Gainst troubling cares!-all hail, these rural fields, Those winding rivulets and verdant shades,
Where thou, the heaven-born goddess, deign'st to dwell!
With thee the hind, upon his simple fare,
Lives cheerful, and from Heaven no more demands.
But ah! how vast, how terrible the change
With him who night by night in sickness pines!
Him, nor his splendid equipage can please,
Nor all the pageantry the world can boast;
Nay, not the consolation of his friends
Can aught avail; his hours are anguish all;
Nor cease till envious death hath closed the scene.
But, Carlos, if we court this maid celestial;
Whether we through meandering rivers stray,
Or midst the city's jarring noise remain,
Let temperance, health's blythe concomitant,
To our desires and appetites set bounds,
Else, cloy'd at last, we surfeit every joy;
Our slacken'd nerves reject their wonted spring;
We reap the fruits of our unkindly lusts,
And feebly totter to the silent grave.
To what sequester'd gloomy shade
Hath ever gentle Pity stray'd?
What brook is water'd from her eyes?
What gales convey her tender sighs?
Unworthy of her grateful lay,
She hath despised the great, the gay;
Nay, all the feelings she imparts
Are far estranged from human hearts.
Ah, Pity! whither would'st thou fly
From human heart, from human eye?
Are desert woods and twilight groves,
The scenes the sobbing pilgrim loves?
If there thou dwell'st, oh Pity! say,
In what lone path you pensive stray.
I'll know thee by the lily's hue,
Besprinkled with the morning's dew;
For thou wilt never blush to wear
The pallid look and falling tear.
In broken cadence from thy tongue,
Oft have we heard the mournful song;
Oft have we view'd the loaded bier
Bedew'd with Pity's softest tear.
Her sighs and tears were ne'er denied,
When innocence and virtue died.
But in this black and iron age,
Where vice and all his demons rage,
Though bells in solemn peals are rung,
Though dirge in mournful verse is sung,
Soon will the vain parade be o'er,
Their name, their memory, no more,
Who love and innocence despised,
And every virtue sacrificed.
Here Pity, as a statue dumb,
Will pay no tribute to the tomb;
Or wake the memory of those
Who never felt for others' woes.
Thou mistress of the feeling heart!
Thy powers of sympathy impart.
If mortals would but fondly prize
Thy falling tears, thy passing sighs,
Then should wan poverty no more
Walk feebly from the rich man's door;
Humility should vanish pride,
And vice be drove from virtue's side:
Then happiness at length should reign;
And golden age begin again.
ON THE COLD MONTH OF APRIL, 1771.
Oh! who can hold a fire in his hand
By thinking on the frosty Caucasus ;
Or cloy the hungry edge of appetite
By bare imagination of a feast;
Or wallow naked in December's snow,
By thinking on fantastic summer's heat?
SHAKSPEARE'S Richard II.
POETS in vain have hail'd the opening spring,
In tender accents woo'd the blooming maid;
In vain have taught the April birds to wing
Their flight through fields in verdant hue array'd.
The Muse, in every season taught to sing,
Amidst the desert snows, by fancy's powers,
Can elevated soar, on placid wing,
To climes where spring her kindest influence showers.
April, once famous for the zephyr mild,
For sweets that early in the garden grow,
Say, how converted to this cheerless wild,
Rushing with torrents of dissolving snow?
Nursed by the moisture of a gentle shower,
Thy foliage oft hath sounded to the breeze;
Oft did thy choristers melodious pour
Their melting numbers through the shady trees.
Fair have I seen thy morn in smiles array'd,
With crimson blush bepaint the eastern sky;
But now the dawn creeps mournful o'er the glade,
Shrouded in colours of a sable dye.
So have I seen the fair, with laughing eye,
And visage cheerful as the smiling morn,
Alternate changing for the heaving sigh,
Or frowning aspect of contemptuous scorn.
Life! what art thou?-a variegated scene
Of mingled light and shade, of joy and woe; A sea where calms and storms promiscuous reign; A stream where sweet and bitter jointly flow.
Mute are the plains; the shepherd pipes no more;
The reed's forsaken, and the tender flock;
While echo, listening to the tempest's roar,
In silence wanders o'er the beetling rock.
Winter, too potent for the solar ray,
Bestrides the blast, ascends his icy throne, And views Britannia, subject to his sway, Floating emergent on the frigid zone.
Thou savage tyrant of the fretful sky!
Wilt thou for ever in our zenith reign?
To Greenland's seas, congeal'd in chillness fly,
Where howling monsters tread the bleak domain.
Relent, oh Boreas! leave thy frozen cell;
Resign to spring her portion of the year;
Let west winds temperate wave the flowing gale,
And hills, and vales, and woods, a vernal aspect
AT noontide, as Colin and Sylvia lay
Within a cool jessamine bower,
A butterfly, waked by the heat of the day,
Was sipping the juice of each flower.
Near the shade of this covert, a young shepherd boy
The gaudy brisk flutterer spies,
Who held it as pastime to seek and destroy
Each beautiful insect that flies.
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