POEMS.
THE INVITATION TO SELBORNE.
See Selborne spreads her boldest beauties round,
The varied valley, and the mountain ground,
Wildly majestic! what is all the pride
Of flats, with loads of ornament supplied?
Unpleasing, tasteless, impotent expense,
Compared with Nature's rude magnificence.
Arise, my stranger, to these wild scenes haste;
The unfinish'd farm awaits your forming taste:
Plan the pavilion, airy, light, and true;
Through the high arch call in the lengthening view;
Expand the forest sloping up the hill;
Swell to a lake the scant, penurious rill;
Extend the vista, raise the castle mound
In antique taste with turrets ivy-crown'd;
O'er the gay lawn the flowery shrub dispread,
Or with the blending garden mix the mead;
Bid China's pale, fantastic fence, delight;
Or with the mimic statue trap the sight.
Oft on some evening, sunny, soft, and still,
The Muse shall lead thee to the beech-grown hill,
To spend in tea the cool, refreshing hour,
Where nods in air the pensile, nest-like bower;[1]
- ↑ A kind of an arbour on the side of a hill.
