To be resign'd when ills betide, And pleas'd with favours giv❜n, We'll ask no long protracted treat, (Since winter life is seldom sweet); But, when our feast is o'er, Grateful from table we'll arise, Nor grudge our sons, with envious The relics of our store. eyes, Thus hand in hand through life we'll go, With conscious steps we'll tread; And mingle with the dead. While conscience, like a faithful friend, Dr. Cotton. HYMN ON SOLITUDE. HALL, mildly-pleasing Solitude! Oh! how I love with thee to walk And listen to thy whisper'd talk, Which innocence and truth imparts, And melts the most obdurate hearts. A thousand shapes you wear with ease, And still in ev'ry shape you please. Now wrapt in some mysterious dream, A lone philosopher you seem; Now quick from hill to vale you fly, And now you sweep the vaulted sky. A shepherd next, you haunt the plain, And warble forth your oaten strain. A lover now, with all the grace Of that sweet passion in your face: Then, calm'd to friendship, you assume The gentle-looking Hartford's bloom, As, with her Musidora, she (Her Musidora fond of thee) Amid the long-withdrawing vale Awakes the rival nightingale. Thine is the balmy breath of morn, Just as the dew-bent rose is born; And while meridian fervours beat, Thine is the woodland dumb retreat : But chief, when ev'ning scenes decay, And the faint landscape swims away, Thine is the doubtful soft decline, And that best hour of musing thine. Descending angels bless thy train, And rapt Urania sings to thee. Oh! let me pierce thy secret cell, And in thy deep recesses dwell. Perhaps from Norwood's oak-clad hill, I just may cast my careless eyes Thomson. THE HUSBANDMAN'S MEDITATION IN THE FIELD. WITH toilsome steps when I pursue O'er breaking clods the ploughshare's way, Lord! teach my mental eye to view My native dissoluble clay. And when with seed I strew the earth, Pleas'd, I behold the stately stem Support its bearded honour's load; Thus, Lord! sustain'd by thee I came Purging from noxious herbs the grain, When blasts destroy the op'ning ear, When harvest comes, the yellow crop When future crops, in silent hoards, Addison. STOP, THE POOR PILGRIM. passenger, whoe'er thou art, Compassion in thy breast may glow; And if thou canst not alms impart, From pity some relief may flow. If wayward fortune thou hast prov'd, An outcast from an affluent home, Mournful and pennyless I roam— My all within this basket laid. |