Religion does not censure or exclude Unnumber'd pleasures harmlessly pursu'd;

To study culture, and with artful toil

To meliorate and tame the stubborn soil;
To give dissimilar yet fruitful lands

The grain, or herb, or plant, that each demands;
To cherish virtue in an humble state,

And share the joys your bounty may create; To mark the matchless workings of the pow'r That shuts within its seed the future flow'r, Bid these in elegance of form excel,

In colour these, and those delight the smell, Sends nature forth the daughter of the skies, To dance on earth, and charm all human eyes; To teach the canvass innocent deceit,

Or lay the landscape on the snowy sheetThese, these are arts pursu'd without a crime, That leave no stain upon the wing of time.

Me poetry (or, rather, notes that aim Feebly and vainly at poetic fame)

Employs, shut out from more important views,
Fast by the banks of the slow winding Ouse;
Content if, thus sequester'd, I may raise

A monitor's, though not a poet's praise,
And while I teach an art too little known,
To close life wisely, may not waste my own.

THE DOVES.

I.

REAS'NING at every step he treads,

Man yet mistakes his way,

While meaner things, whom instinct leads,

Are rarely known to stray.

II.

One silent eve I wander'd late,

And heard the voice of love;

The turtle thus address'd her mate,

And sooth'd the list'ning dove

III.

Our mutual bond of faith and truth,

No time shall disengage;

Those blessings of our early youth,

Shall cheer our latest age:

IV.

While innocence without disguise,

And constancy sincere,

Shall fill the circles of those eyes,

And mine can read them there;

V.

Those ills that wait on all below

Shall ne'er be felt by me,

Or, gently felt, and only so,

As being shar'd with thee.

VI.

When lightnings flash among the trees, Or kites are hovʼring near,

I fear lest thee alone they seize,

And know no other fear.

VII.

"Tis then I feel myself a wife,

And press thy wedded side,

Resolv'd an union form'd for life

Death never shall divide.

VIII.

But, oh! if, fickle and unchaste,

(Forgive a transient thought)

Thou could become unkind at last, And scorn thy present lot,

IX.

No need of lightnings from on high,

Or kites with cruel beak;

Denied th' endearments of thine

eye,

This widow'd heart would break.

X.

Thus sang the sweet sequester'd bird

Soft as the passing wind,

And I recorded what I heard

A lesson for mankind.