And startle from her aspen spray,
Across the glen, the screaming jay:
Each native charm their steps explore,
Of Solitude's sequester'd lore.
For them, the moon, with cloudless ray,
Mounts to illume their home-ward way:
Their weary spirits to relieve,
The meadows incense breathe at eve.
No riot mars the simple fare
That o'er a glimmering hearth they share :
But when the curfew's measur'd roar
Duly, the darkening valleys o'er,
Has echo'd from the distant town,
They wish no beds of cygnet-down,
No trophied canopies, to close
Their drooping eyes in quick repose.
Their little sons, who spread the bloom
Of health around the clay-built room,
Or through the primros'd coppice stray,
Or gambol in the new-mown hay;
Or quaintly braid the cowslip-twine,
Or drive afield the tardy kine;
Or hasten from the sultry hill
To loiter at the shady rill;
Or climb the tall pine's gloomy crest,
To rob the raven's ancient nest.
Their humble porch with honied flowers
The curling woodbine's shade embowers :
From the trim garden's thymy mound,
Their bees in busy swarms resound:
Nor fell Disease before his time,
Hastes to consume Life's golden prime ;
But when their temples long have wore
The silver crown of tresses hoar,
As studious still calm peace to keep,
Beneath a flowery turf they sleep.
If ought of oaten stop, or pastoral song,
May hope, chaste Eve, to soothe thy modest ear,
Like thy own solemn springs,
Thy springs, and dying gales,
O nymph reserv'd, while now the bright-hair'd sun Sits in yon eastern tent, whose cloudy skirts,
With brede etherial wove,
Now air is hush'd, save where the weak-eye'd 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 compos'd,
To breathe some soften'd strain,
Whose numbers stealing thro' thy darkening vale, May not unseemly with its stillness suit,
As musing slow, I hail
Thy genial lov'd 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,
a Nymph who wreathes her brows with
And sheds the freshening dew, and lovelier still,
The pensive Pleasures sweet
Prepare their 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 thro' 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!
VARIOUS PASSAGES OF POETRY SELECTED AS EXERCISES TO
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