SEE, Selborne spreads her boldest beauties round
The varied valley, and the mountain ground,
Wildly majestic! What is all the pride
Of flats, with loads of ornaments supplied ?—
Unpleasing, tasteless, impotent expense,
Compared with Nature's rude magnificence.
Arise, my stranger, to these wild scenes haste;
The unfinish'd farm awaits your forming taste:
Plan the pavilion, airy, light, and true;
Through the high arch call in the length'ning view;
Expand the forest sloping up the hill ;
Swell to a lake the scant, penurious rill
Extend the vista; raise the castle mound
In antique taste, with turrets ivy-crown'd:
O'er the gay lawn the flow'ry shrub dispread,
Or with the blending garden mix the mead;
Bid China's pale, fantastic fence delight;
Or with the mimic statue trap the sight.
Oft on some evening, sunny, soft, and still,
The Muse shall lead thee to the beech-grown hill,
To spend in tea the cool, refreshing hour,
Where nods in air the pensile, nest-like bower;
Or where the hermit hangs the straw-clad cell,†
Emerging gently from the leafy dell,
* A kind of arbour on the side of a hill.
+ A grotesque building, contrived by a young gentleman, who used on occasion to appear in the character of a hermit.
By fancy plann'd; as once th' inventive maid
Met the hoar sage amid the secret shade:
Romantic spot! from whence in prospect lies
Whate'er of landscape charms our feasting eyes,—
The pointed spire, the hall, the pasture plain,
The russet fallow, or the golden grain,
The breezy lake that sheds a gleaming light,
Till all the fading picture fail the sight.
Each to his task; all different ways retire:
Cull the dry stick; call forth the seeds of fire;
Deep fix the kettle's props, a forky row,
Or give with fanning hat the breeze to blow.
Whence is this taste, the furnish'd hall forgot,
To feast in gardens, or th' unhandy grot?
Or novelty with some new charms surprises,
Or from our very shifts some joy arises.
Hark, while below the village bells ring round,
Echo, sweet nymph, returns the soften'd sound;
But if gusts rise, the rushing forests roar,
Like the tide tumbling on the pebbly shore.
Adown the vale, in lone, sequester'd nook,
Where skirting woods imbrown the dimpling brook,
The ruin'd convent lies: here wont to dwell
The lazy canon midst his cloister'd cell,*
While Papal darkness brooded o'er the land,
Ere Reformation made her glorious stand:
Still oft at eve belated shepherd swains
See the cowl'd spectre skim the folded plains.
To the high Temple would my stranger go,†
The mountain-brow commands the woods below:
In Jewry first this order found a name,
When madding Croisades set the world in flame;
When western climes, urged on by pope and priest
Pour'd forth their millions o'er the deluged East:
* The ruins of a Priory, founded by Peter de Rupibus, Bishop cf Winchester.
+ The remains of a Preceptory of the Knights Templars; at least it was a rm dependent upon some preceptory of that order. I find it was a preceptory, lled the Preceptory of Suddington; now called Southington.
Luxurious knights, ill suited to defy
To mortal fight Turcéstan chivalry.
Nor be the parsonage by the Muse forgot-
The partial bard admires his native spot;
Smit with its beauties, loved, as yet a child,
Unconscious why, its capes, grotesque and wild.
High on a mound th' exalted gardens stand,
Beneath, deep valleys, scoop'd by Nature's hand.
A Cobham here, exulting in his art,
Might blend the general's with the gardener's part;
Might fortify with all the martial trade
Of rampart, bastion, fosse, and palisade ;
Might plant the mortar with wide threat'ning bore, Or bid the mimic cannon seem to roar.
Now climb the steep, drop now your eye below Where round the blooming village orchards grow; There, like a picture, lies my lowly seat,
A rural, shelter'd, unobserved retreat.
Me far above the rest Selbornian scenes,
The pendent forests, and the mountain greens,
Strike with delight; there spreads the distant view,
That gradual fades till sunk in misty blue :
Here Nature hangs her slopy woods to sight,
Rills purl between and dart a quivering light.
A WINTER PIECE. TO THE MISS B*****S.
THE bard, who sang so late in blithest strain
Selbornian prospects, and the rural reign,
Now suits his plaintive pipe to sadden'd tone,
While the blank swains the changeful year bemoan.
How fallen the glories of these fading scenes!
The dusky beech resigns his vernal greens;
The yellow maple mourns in sickly hue,
Aud russet woodlands crowd the dark'ning view.
Dim, clust'ring fogs involve the country round,
The valley and the blended mountain ground
Sink in confusion; but with tempest-wing
Should Boreas from his northern barrier spring,
The rushing woods with deaf'ning clamour roar,
Like the sea tumbling on the pebbly shore.
When spouting rains descend in torrent tides,
See the torn zigzag weep its channel'd sides :
Winter exerts its rage; heavy and slow,
From the keen east rolls on the treasured snow;
Sunk with its weight the bending boughs are seen,
And one bright deluge whelms the works of men.
Amidst this savage landscape, bleak and bare,
Hangs the chill hermitage in middle air ;
Its haunts forsaken, and its feasts forgot,
A leaf-strown, lonely, desolated cot !
Is this the scene that late with rapture rang,
Where Delphy danced, and gentle Anna sang ?
With fairy step where Harriet tripp'd so late,
And, on her stump reclined, the musing Kitty sate?
Return, dear nymphs; prevent the purple spring,
Ere the soft nightingale essays to sing ;
Ere the first swallow sweeps the fresh'ning plain,
Ere love-sick turtles breathe their amorous pain;
Let festive glee th' enliven'd village raise,
Pan's blameless reign, and patriarchal days;
With pastoral dance the smitten swain surprise,
And bring all Arcady before our eyes.
Return, blithe maidens; with you bring along
Free, native humour; all the charms of song;
The feeling heart, and unaffected ease;
Each nameless grace and ev'ry power to please.
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