Of solemn oaks, that tuft the swelling mounts Thrown graceful round by Nature's careless hand, And pensive listen to the various voice

Of rural peace: the herds, the flocks, the birds,
The hollow-whispering breeze, the plaint of rills,
That, purling down amid the twisted roots

Which creep around, their dewy murmurs shake
On the soothed ear. From these abstracted oft,
You wander through the philosophic world;
Where in bright train continual wonders rise,
Or to the curious or the pious eye.

And oft, conducted by historic truth,
You tread the long extent of backward time:
Planning, with warm benevolence of mind,
And honest zeal unwarp'd by party-rage,
Brittannia's weal; how from the venal gulph
To raise her virtue, and her arts revive.

Or, turning thence thy view, these graver thoughts
The Muses charm: while, with sure taste refined,
You draw the inspiring breath of ancient song;
Till nobly rises, emulous, thy own.

Perhaps thy loved Lucinda shares thy walk,
With soul to thine attuned. Then Nature all
Wears to the lover's eye a look of love;
And all the tumult of a guilty world,
Toss'd by ungenerous passions, sinks away.
The tender heart is animated peace;
And as it pours its copious treasures forth,
In varied converse, softening every theme,
You, frequent pausing, turn, and from her eyes,
Where meekened sense, and amiable grace,
And lively sweetness dwell, enraptured, drink
That nameless spirit of ethereal joy,
Unutterable happiness! which love

Alone bestows, and on a favour'd few.

Meantime you gain the height, from whose fair brow The bursting prospect spreads immense around: And snatch'd o'er hill and dale, and wood and lawn, And verdant field, and darkening heath between, And villages emboss'd soft in trees,

And spiry towns by surging columns mark'd

Of household smoke, your eye excursive roams :
Wide stretching from the Hall, in whose kind haunt
The Hospitable Genius lingers still,

To where the broken landscape, by degrees,
Ascending, roughens into rigid hills;

O'er which the Cambrian mountains, like far clouds
That skirt the blue horizon, dusky rise,
Flush'd by the spirit of the genial year,
Now from the virgin's cheek a fresher bloom
Shoots less and less, the live carnation round;
Her lips blush deeper sweets; she breathes of youth;
The shining moisture swells into her eyes,
In brighter flow; her wishing bosom heaves,
With palpitations wild; kind tumults seize
Her veins; and all her yielding soul is love.
From the keen gaze her lover turns away,
Full of the dear ecstatic power, and sick
With sighing languishment. Ah then, ye fair!
Be greatly cautious of your sliding hearts:
Dare not the infectious sigh; the pleading look,
Downcast and low, in meek submission drest,
But full of guile. Let not the fervent tongue,
Prompt to deceive with adulation smooth,
Gain on your purposed will. Nor in the bower,
Where woodbines flaunt, and roses shed a couch,
While Evening draws her crimson curtains round,
Trust your soft minutes with betraying Man.

And let th' aspiring youth beware of love;
Of the smooth glance beware, for 'tis too late,
When on his heart the torrent softness pours.
Then wisdom prostrate lies, and fading fame
Dissolves in air away; while the fond soul,
Wrapt in gay visions of unreal bliss,
Still paints th' illusive form; the kindling grace;
Th' enticing smile; the modest-seeming eye,
Beneath whose beauteous beams, belying heaven,
Lurk searchless cunning, cruelty, and death:
And still false-warbling in his cheated ear,

Her syren voice, enchanting, draws him on
To guileful shores, and meeds of fatal joy.
Even present in the very lap of love.
Inglorious laid; while music flows around,
Perfumes, and oils, and wine, and wanton hours;
Amid the roses fierce Repentance rears

Her snaky crest; a quick returning pang

Shoots through the conscious heart; where honour still,
And great design, against the oppressive load
Of luxury, by fits impatient heave.

But absent, what fantastic woes aroused,
Rage in each thought, by restless musing fed,
Chill the warm cheek, and blast the bloom of life?
Neglected fortune flies; and sliding swift,

Prone into ruin, fall his scorn'd affairs.

"Tis nought but gloom around; the darken'd sun
Loses his light. The rosy-bosom'd Spring
To weeping Fancy pines; and yon bright arch,
Contracted, bends into a dusky vault.

All Nature fades extinct; and she alone
Heard, felt, and seen, possesses every thought,
Fills every sense, and pants in every vein.
Books are but formal dulness, tedious friends;
And sad amid the social band he sits,
Lonely and unattentive. From his tongue
Th' unfinish'd period falls; while borne away
On swelling thought, his wafted spirit flies
To the vain bosom of his distant fair;
And leaves the semblance of a lover, fix'd
In melancholy site, with head declined
And love-dejected eyes. Sudden he starts,
Shook from his tender trance, and restless runs
To glimmering shades and sympathetic glooms;
Where the dun umbrage o'er the falling stream,
Romantic, hangs; there, through the pensive dusk,
Strays in heart-thrilling meditation lost,
Indulging all to love: or on the bank

Thrown amid drooping lilies, swells the breeze
With sighs unceasing, and the brook with tears.
Thus in soft anguish he consumes the day,

Nor quits his deep retirement till the Moon
Peeps through the chambers of the fleecy east,
Enlightened by degrees, and in her train
Leads on the gentle hours; then forth he walks,
Beneath the trembling languish of her beam,
With soften'd soul; and woos the bird of eve
To mingle woes with his: or, while the world,
And all the sons of Care lie hush'd in sleep,
Associates with the midnight shadows drear;
And sighing to the lonely taper, pours
His idly-tortured heart into the page,
Meant for the moving messenger of love:
Where rapture burns on rapture, every line
With rising phrenzy fired. But, if on bed
Delirious flung, sleep from his pillow flies :
All night he tosses, nor the balmy power
In any posture finds: till the gray morn
Lifts her pale lustre on the paler wretch,
Exanimate by love: and then perhaps
Exhausted Nature sinks awhile to rest,
Still interrupted by distracted dreams,
That o'er the sick imagination rise,
And in black colours paint the mimic scene.

Oft with the enchantress of his soul he talks;
Sometimes in crowds distress'd; or if retired
To secret winding flower-enwoven bowers,
Far from the dull impertinence of man,
Just as he, credulous, his endless cares
Begins to loselin blind oblivious love,

Snatch'd from her yielded hand he knows not how,
Through forests huge, and long untravel'd heaths
With desolation brown he wanders waste,
In night and tempest wrapt; or shrinks aghast,
Back from the bending precipice; or wades
The turbid stream below, and strives to reach
The farther shore; where, succourless and sad,
She with extended arms his aid implores;
But strives in vain; borne by the outrageous flood
To distance down, he rides the ridgy wave,
Or whelm'd beneath the boiling eddy sinks.

These are the charming agonies of love,

Whose misery delights. But, through the heart
Should jealousy its venom once diffuse,
'Tis then delightful misery no more,
But agony unmix'd, incessant gall,
Corroding every thought, and blasting all
Love's paradise. Ye fairy prospects, then,
Ye beds of roses, and ye bowers of joy,
Farewell! Ye gleamings of departed peace,
Shine out your last! the yellow-tinging plague
Internal vision taints, and in a night
Of livid gloom imagination wraps.

Ah then! instead of love-enliven'd cheeks,
Of sunny features, and of ardent eyes
With flowing rapture bright, dark looks succeed,
Suffused, and glaring with untender fire;
A clouded aspect, and a burning cheek,
Where the whole poison'd soul, malignant, sits,
And frightens Love away. Ten thousand fears
Invented wild, ten thousand frantic views
Of horrid rivals, hanging on the charms
For which he melts in fondness, eat him up
With fervent anguish, and consuming rage.
In vain reproaches lend their idle aid,
Deceitful pride, and resolution frail,
Giving false peace a moment. Fancy pours,
Afresh, her beauties on his busy thought,
Her first endearments twining round the soul,
With all the witchcraft of ensnaring love.

Straight the fierce storm involves his mind anew,
Flames through the nerves, and boils along the veins;
While anxious doubt distracts the tortured heart:

For even the sad assurance of his fears

Were ease to what he feels. Thus the warm youth,
Whom love deludes into his thorny wilds,

Through flowery-tempting paths, or leads a life
Of fever'd rapture, or of cruel care;
His brighest flames extinguish'd all, and all
His lively moments running down to waste.