And verdant field, and darkening heath between; 950 And villages enbosom'd soft in trees,
And spiry towns by surging columns mark'd
Of household smoak, your eye excursive roams: Wide-stretching from the Hall, in whose kind haunt The hospitable Genius lingers still,
To where the broken landskip, 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 extatic power, and sick
With sighing languishment. Ah then, ye fair!
Be greatly cautious of your sliding hearts:
Dare not th' infectious sigh; the pleading look,
Down cast, and low, in meek submission drest,
But full of guile. Let not the fervent tongue,
Prompt to deceive, with adulation smooth,
Gain on your purpos'd will. Nor in the bower,
Where wood binds 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' inticing 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 meads 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 thro' the conscious heart; where honour still,
And great design, against th' oppressive load
Of luxury, by fits, impatient heave.
BUT absent, what fantastic woes, arrous'd,
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 darkened 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 dullness, 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 declin’d,
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 thro' the pensive dusk 1025
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 thro' 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 wooes 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-tortur'd heart into the page,
Meant for the moving messenger of love;
Where rapture burns on rapture, every line
With rising frenzy fir'd. 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 grey morn
Lifts her pale lustre on the paler wretch,
Exanimate by love: and then perhaps
Exhausted Nature sinks a while to rest;
Still interrupted by distracted dreams,
That o'er the sick imagination rise,
And in black colours paint the mimic scene.
OFT with th' enchantress of his soul he talks Sometimes in crouds distress'd; or if retir'd
To fecret winding flower-enwoven bowers,
Far from the dull impertinence of Man ;
Just as he, credulous, his endless cares
Begins to lose in blind oblivious love,
Snatch'd from her yielded hand, he knows not how,
Thro' forests huge, and long untravel'd heaths 1061
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 1065
The farther shore; where, succourless and sad,
She with extended arms his aid implores;
But strives in vain : borne by th' 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 thro' 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 1080
Internal vision taints, and in a night
Of livid gloom imagination wraps.
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