All hail, once pleasing, once inspiring shade, Scene of my youthful loves, and happier hours! Where the kind Muses met me as I stray'd, And gently press'd my hand, and said, 'Be ours!--...
In amaze Lost I gaze! Can our eyes Reach thy size! May my lays Swell with praise, Worthy thee! Worthy me! Muse, inspire All thy fire! Bards of old Of him told....
Come gentle Air! th' AEolian shepherd said, While Procris panted in the secret shade: Come, gentle Air, the fairer Delia cries, While at her feet her swain expiring lies....
1 Lest you should think that verse shall die, Which sounds the silver Thames along, Taught, on the wings of truth to fly Above the reach of vulgar song;
Goddess of woods, tremendous in the chase, To mountain wolves and all the savage race, Wide o'er th' aerial vault extend thy sway, And o'er th' infernal regions void of day....
Thou art my God, sole object of my love; Not for the hope of endless joys above; Nor for the fear of endless pains below, Which they who love thee not must undergo. ...
Grown old in rhyme, 'twere barbarous to discard Your persevering, unexhausted bard; Damnation follows death in other men, But your damn'd poet lives and writes again....
Say, lovely youth, that dost my heart command, Can Phaon's eyes forget his Sappho's hand? Must then her name the wretched writer prove, To thy remembrance lost, as to thy love?...
First in these fields I try the sylvan strains, Nor blush to sport on Windsor's blissful plains: Fair Thames, flow gently from thy sacred spring, While on thy banks Sicilian Muses sing;...
Sylvia my heart in wondrous wise alarm'd Awed without sense, and without beauty charm'd: But some odd graces and some flights she had, Was just not ugly, and was just not mad:...
She said, and for her lost Galanthis sighs; When the fair consort of her son replies: 'Since you a servant's ravish'd form bemoan, And kindly sigh for sorrows not your own,...
She said, and for her lost Calanthis sighs, When the fair Consort of her son replies. "Since you a servant's ravish'd form bemoan, And kindly sigh for sorrows not your own;...
St John, whose love indulged my labours past, Matures my present, and shall bound my last! Why will you break the Sabbath of my days? Now sick alike of envy and of praise....
Say, St John, who alone peruse With candid eye the mimic Muse, What schemes of politics, or laws, In Gallic lands the patriot draws! Is then a greater work in hand, Than all the tomes of Haines's band?...
Soon as Glumdalclitch miss'd her pleasing care, She wept, she blubber'd, and she tore her hair: No British miss sincerer grief has known, Her squirrel missing, or her sparrow flown....