The Poetical Works of Collins, Gray, and Beattie

Than goats with foliage, than the grassy plain
With silver rills and soft refreshing rain.'
Pan spoke; and thus the youth, with grief opprest;
Arcadians! here, O hear my last request;

O ye, to whom the sweetest lays belong,
O let my sorrows on your hills be sung:
If your soft flutes shall celebrate my woes,
How will my bones in deepest peace repose!

Ah, had I been with you a country-swain,
And pruned the vine, and fed the bleating train;
Had Phyllis, or some other rural fair,

Or black Amyntas been my darling care;

(Beauteous, though black; what lovelier flower is seen
Than the dark violet on the painted green ?)
These in the bower had yielded all their charms,
And sunk with mutual raptures in my arms :
Phyllis had crown'd my head with garlands gay,
Amyntas sung the pleasing hours away.
Here, O Lycoris, purls the limpid spring,
Bloom all the meads, and all the woodlands sing;
Here let me press thee to my panting breast,
Till youth, and joy, and life itself be past.
Banish'd by love, o'er hostile lands I stray,
And mingle in the battle's dread array;
Whilst thou, relentless to my constant flame,
(Ah could I disbelieve the voice of fame!)
Far from thy home, unaided and forlorn, -
Far from thy love, thy faithful love, art borne,
On the bleak Alps with chilling blasts to pine,
Or wander waste along the frozen Rhine.

Ye icy paths, O spare her tender form!

O spare those heavenly charms, thou wintry storm!
Hence let me hasten to some desert-grove,
And soothe with songs my long-unanswer'd love.
I go, in some lone wilderness to suit

Eubœan lays to my Sicilian flute.

Better with beasts of prey to make abode

In the deep cavern, or the darksome wood;
And carve on trees the story of my woe,

Which with the growing bark shall ever grow.
Meanwhile, with woodland-nymphs, a lovely throng,
The winding groves of Mænalus along

I roam at large; or chase the foaming boar;
Or with sagacious hounds the wilds explore,
Careless of cold. And now methinks I bound
O'er rocks and cliffs, and hear the woods resound;
And now with beating heart I seem to wing
The Cretan arrow from the Parthian string-
As if I thus my frenzy could forego,

As if love's god could melt at human woe.

Alas! nor nymphs nor heavenly songs delight-
Farewell, ye groves! the groves no more invite.
No pains, no miseries of man can move
The unrelenting deity of love.

To quench your thirst in Marus' frozen flood,
To make the Scythian snows your drear abode;
Or feed your flock on Ethiopian plains,
When Sirius' fiery constellation reigns,
(When deep-imbrown'd the languid herbage lies
And in the elm the vivid verdure dies,)
Were all in vain. Love's unresisted sway
Extends to all, and we must Love obey.'

'Tis done; ye Nine, here ends your poet's strain,
In pity sung to soothe his Gallus' pain.
While leaning on a flowery bank I twine
The flexile osiers, and the basket join.
Celestial Nine, your sacred influence bring,
And soothe my Gallus' sorrows while I sing:
Gallus, my much beloved! for whom I feel
The flame of purest friendship rising still :
So by a brook the verdant alders rise,
When fostering zephyrs fan the vernal skies.

Let us be gone: at eve, the shade annoys With noxious damps, and hurts the singer's voice; The Juniper breathes bitter vapours round, That kill the springing corn, and blast the ground. Homeward, my sated goats, now let us hie, Lo beamy Hesper gilds the western sky.

CONTENTS

TO COLLINS'S POEMS.

THE Life of Collins

ORIENTAL ECLOGUES.

Eclogue I. Selim; or, the Shepherd's Moral
II. Hassan; or, the Camel-driver
XIII. Abra; or, the Georgian Sultana