Woods, dales, and flocks, and herds, and cots, and
Villas of learned clerks and gentle squires;
The villa of a friend the eyesight never tires.
If e'er to thee and Venus, May, I strung
The gladsome lyre, when livelood* swell'd my
veins,
And Eden's nymphs and Isis' damsels sung
In tender elegy †, and pastoral strains ;
Collect and shed thyself on Theron's bowers,
O green his gardens, O perfume his flowers,
O bless his morning walks and soothe his evening
hours.
Long, Theron, with thy Annabel enjoy
The walks of Nature, still to Virtue kind,
For sacred solitude can never cloy;
The wisdom of an uncorrupted mind!
O very long may Hymen's golden chain
To earth confine you and the rural reign;
Then soar, at length, to heaven! nor pray, O
Muse, in vain.
Where'er the Muses haunt, or poets muse,
In solitary silence sweetly tired,
Unloose thy bosom, May! thy stores effuse,
Thy vernal stores, by poets most desired,
Of living fountain, of the woodbine shade,
Of Philomela, warbling from the glade.
Thy bounty, in his verse, shall certes be repaid.
+ Stella; sive Amores: Elegiarum Tres Libri. Written in the year 1736.
Six Pastorals: written in the year 1734.
On Twit'nam bowers (Aonian Twit'nam bowers!)
Thy softest plenitude of beauties shed,
Thick as the Winter stars or Summer flowers;
Albe* the tuneful Master (ah!) be dead.
To Colin next he taught my youth to sing,
My reed to warble, to resound my string:
The king of shepherds he, of poets he the king.
Hail, happy scenes, where Joy would choose to dwell;
Hail, golden days, which Saturn deems his own;
Hail, music, which the Muses scant excel;
Hail, flowerets, not unworthy Venus' crown.
Ye linnets, larks, ye, thrushes, nightingales;
Ye hills, ye plains, ye groves, ye streams, ye gales,
Ye ever happy scenes! all you your Poet hails.
All hail to thee, O May! the crown of all!
The recompense and glory of my song:
Ne small the recompense, ne glory small,
If gentle ladies and the tuneful throng,
With lover's myrtle and with poet's bay
Fairly bedight, approve the simple lay,
And think on Thomalin whene'er they hail thee,
May!
IF aught of oaten stop or pastoral song
May hope, O pensive Eve, to soothe thine ear*,
Like thy own brawling springs,
Thy springs, and dying gales;
O nymph reserved, while now the bright-hair'd Sun
Sits in yon western tent, whose cloudy skirts,
With brede ethereal wove,
O'erhang his wavy bed;—
Now air is hush'd, save where the weak-eyed bat
With short shrill shriek flits by on leathern wing;
Or where the beetle winds
His small but sullen horn,
As oft he rises midst the twilight path,
Against the pilgrim borne in heedless hum;
Now teach me, maid composed,
To breathe some soften'd strain,
Whose numbers, stealing through thy darkening May not unseemly with its stillness suit; [vale; As, musing slow, I hail
Thy genial loved return!
For when thy folding star arising shows
His paly circlet, at his warning lamp
The fragrant hours, and elves
Who slept in buds the day,
* May hope, chaste Eve, to soothe thy modest ear, Like thy own solemn springs, &c.
And many a nymph who wreaths her brows with
And sheds the freshening dew, and, lovelier still, The pensive Pleasures sweet
Prepare thy shadowy car.
Then let me rove some wild and heathy scene; Or find some ruin, midst its dreary dells, Whose walls more awful nod
By thy religious gleams.
Or if chill blustering winds or driving rain
Prevent my willing feet, be mine the hut,
That, from the mountain's side,
Views wilds, and swelling floods,
And hamlets brown, and dim-discover'd spires;
And hears their simple bell; and marks o'er all
Thy dewy fingers draw
The gradual dusky veil.
While Spring shall pour his showers, as oft he wont,
And bathe thy breathing tresses, meekest Eve!
While Summer loves to sport
Beneath thy lingering light;
While sallow Autumn fills thy lap with leaves;
Or Winter, yelling through the troublous air,
Affrights thy shrinking train,
And rudely rends thy robes;
So long regardful of thy quiet rule,
Shall Fancy, Friendship, Science, smiling Peace Thy gentlest influence own,
And love thy favourite name!
O THOU whose light touch sheds the opiate dews
Of bland Oblivion; thou whose power
Man's wearied drooping frame renews,
Oft as thou deign'st thy influence shower
On my closed lids, lead me, O shadowy queen,
To fairy regions, and some blissful clime
Elysian; picturing the unreal scene
In Fancy's gorgeous garb and imagery sublime :
And bring from out thy magic cell
That potent necromantic spell
Which holds the soul in wonder's trance,
While pass thy airy train successive by,
Rolling along the vision'd ecstasy
To rapt Attention's glance:
Oft has the bard whom genius warms,
Who marks at eve thy spectre-forms,
Won from thy magic stores divine
The colouring of his simple line;
And o'er the page the Muses own
Rays of poetic glory thrown;
And sketch'd the high wrought scenes, and bade them glow
In radiant hues of light, and Fiction's solemn show.
But far, far greater boast was thine
When Inspiration led thy band;
When not with fond illusions vain,
Such as the idle brain
Alarm with prodigy and dire portent,
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