V.

How calm and quiet a delight

It is alone

To read, and meditate, and write,

By none offended, and offending none !

To walk, ride, sit, or sleep at one's own ease, And pleasing a man's self, none other to displease!

VI.

Oh my beloved nymph! fair Dɔve;
Princess of rivers, how I love
Upon thy flowery banks to lie ;
And view thy silver stream,

When gilded by a summer's beam,
And in it all thy wanton fry
Playing at liberty,

And with my angle upon them
The all of treachery

I ever learnt, industriously to try.4

VII.

Such streams Rome's yellow Tyber cannot show,
Th' Iberian Tagus, nor Ligurian Po;

The Meuse, the Danube, and the Rhine
Are puddle-water all compar'd with thine;
And Loire's pure streams yet too polluted are
With thine, much purer to compare ;
The rapid Garonne, and the winding Seine,
Are both too mean,

Beloved Dove, with thee

To vie priority;

Nay, Tame and Isis, when conjoin'd, submit,
And lay their trophies at thy silver feet.

VIII.

Oh my beloved rocks! that rise

To awe the earth, and brave the skies,
From some aspiring mountain's crown,
How dearly do I love,

Giddy with pleasure, to look down;

And, from the vales to view the noble heights above!

IX.

Oh my beloved caves! from dog-star's heat

And all anxieties, my safe retreat : 5

What safety, privacy, what true delight,

In the artificial night,

Your gloomy entrails make,
Have I taken, do I take !

VARIATIONS.

4 I ever learn'd to practise and to try!
5 And hotter persecution safe retreats.