REPUTATION-RESURRECTION-RETIREMENT. 269
Not all the owner's care, nor the repenting toil
Of the rude spiller ever can collect
To its first purity and native sweetness.
Sewell's Sir Walter Raleigh.
'Tis come, the glorious morn! the second birth
Of heaven and earth! awakening nature hears
The new-creating word, and starts to life,
In every heighten'd form, from pain and death
For ever free.
Thomson's Seasons-Winter.
Ye vainly wise! ye blind presumptuous! now,
Confounded in the dust, adore that power
And wisdom oft arraign'd: see now the cause,
Why unassuming worth in secret liv'd,
And dy'd neglected: why the good man's share
In life was gall and bitterness of soul:
Why the lone widow and her orphans pin'd
In starving solitude; while luxury
In palaces, lay straining her low thoughts
To form unreal wants.
Oft seeks so sweet retired solitude;
Where, with her best nurse, contemplation,
She plumes her feathers, and lets grow her wings,
That in the various bustle of resort
Were all too ruffled, and sometimes impair'd.
Dear solitary groves, where peace does dwell!
Sweet harbours of pure love and innocence !
How willingly could I for ever stay
Beneath the shade of your embracing greens,
List'ning to the harmony of warbling birds,
Tun'd with the gentle murmur of the streams;
Upon whose bank, in various livery,
The fragrant offspring of the early year,
Their heads, like graceful swans, bent proudly down,
See their own beauties in the crystal flood.
Rochester's Valentinian.
Secure and free they pass their harmless hours,
Gay as the birds that revel in the grove,
And sing the morning up. Tate's Loyal General.
When vice prevails, and impious men bear sway,
The post of honour is a private station.
Braces the listless nerves, and warms the blood:
Joanna Baillie's De Monfort, a. 1, s. 2.
Yon river, like a silvery snake, lays out
His coil i' th' sunshine lovingly-it breathes
Of freshness in this lap of flowery meadows.
Sir A. Hunt's Julian.
Under a tuft of shade that on the green
Stood whisp'ring soft, by a fresh fountain side
They sat them down; and after no more toil
Of their sweet gard'ning labour than suffic'd
To recommend cool zephyr, and made ease
More easy, wholesome thirst and appetite
More grateful, to their supper fruits they fell.
Milton's Paradise Lost, b. 4.
Meets his approach, and to the heart inspires
Vernal delight and joy, able to drive
All sadness but despair: now gentle gales
Fanning their odoriferous wings dispense
Native perfumes, and whisper whence they stole
Those balmy spoils. Milton's Paradise Lost, b. 4.
The flow'ry lap
Of some irriguous valley spread her store,
Flow'rs of all hue, and without thorn the rose.
A wilderness of sweets; for nature here
Wanton'd as in her prime, and play'd at will
Her virgin fancies, pouring forth more sweet,
Wild above rule or art, enormous bliss.
O happy, if ye knew your happy state,
Ye rangers of the fields! whom Nature's boon
Cheers with her smiles, and ev'ry element
Conspires to bless.
Somervile's Chase, b. 4.
Remote from multitude; the world's a school
Of wrong, and what proficients swarm around!
We must, or imitate, or disapprove;
Must list as their accomplices, or foes;
That stains our innocence; this wounds our peace. From nature's birth, hence, wisdom has been smit With sweet recess, and languisht for the shade.
Young's Night Thoughts, n. 5.
Or by the vocal woods and waters lull'd,
And lost in lonely musing, in the dream,
Confus'd, of careless solitude, where mix
Ten thousand wand'ring images of things,
Soothe every gust of passion into peace;
All but the swellings of the soften'd heart,
That waken, not disturb, the tranquil mind.
Thomson's Seasons-Spring.
Perhaps thy lov'd Lucinda shares thy walk,
With soul to thine attun'd. 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.
Thomson's Seasons-Spring.
Buried in smoke, and sleep, and noisome damps,
Oft let me wander o'er the dewy fields,
Where freshness breathes, and dash the trembling drops
From the bent bush, as through the verdant maze
Of sweet-brier hedges I pursue my walk.
Welcome, ye shades! ye bowery thickets, hail!
Ye lofty pines! ye venerable oaks !
Ye ashes wild, resounding o'er the steep!
Delicious is your shelter to the soul. Ibid.-Summer.
Thrice happy he! who on the sunless side
Of a romantic mountain, forest crown'd,
Beneath the whole collected shade reclines:
Or in the gelid caverns, wood-bine wrought,
And fresh bedew'd with ever-spouting streams,
Sits coolly calm; while all the world without,
Unsatisfy'd, and sick, tosses at noon.
Emblem instructive of the virtuous man,
Who keeps his temper'd mind serene, and pure,
And every passion aptly harmoniz'd,
Amid a jarring world with vice inflam'd.
The lovely young Lavinia once had friends;
And fortune smil'd, deceitful, on her birth.
For, in her helpless years depriv'd of all,
Of every stay save innocence and Heaven,
She with her widow'd mother, feeble, old,
And poor, liv'd in a cottage, far retir'd
Among the windings of a woody vale;
By solitude and deep surrounding shades,
But more by bashful modesty conceal'd.
Thomson's Seasons.-Autumn.
Together thus they shunn'd the cruel scorn
Which virtue, sunk to poverty, would meet
From giddy passion and low-minded pride :
Almost on nature's common bounty fed;
Like the gay birds that sung them to repose,
Content, and careless of to-morrow's fare.
Here too dwells simple truth; plain innocence;
Unsullied beauty; sound unbroken youth,
Patient of labour, with a little pleas'd;
Health ever blooming; unambitious toil;
Calm contemplation, and poetic ease.
Oh knew he but his happiness, of men
The happiest he! who far from public rage,
Deep in the vale, with a choice few retir'd,
Drinks the pure pleasures of the rural life.
For those whom wisdom and whom nature charm,
To steal themselves from the degenerate crowd,
And soar above this little scene of things;
To tread low-thoughted vice beneath their feet;
To soothe the throbbing passions into peace;
And wooe lone quiet in her silent walks.
The rage of nations, and the crush of states,
Move not the man, who, from the world escap'd,
In still retreats, and flowery solitudes,
To nature's voice attends, from month to month,
And day to day, thro' the revolving year;
Admiring, sees her in her every shape;
Feels all her sweet emotions at his heart;
Takes what she liberal gives, nor thinks of more.
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