AMBROSE PHILIPS

  TO MISS CHARLOTTE PULTENEY, IN HER
  MOTHER’S ARMS

  Timely blossom, infant fair,
  Pondling of a happy pair,
  Every morn and every night
  Their solicitous delight;
  Sleeping, waking, still at ease,
  Pleasing, without skill to please;
  Little gossip, blithe and hale,
  Tattling many a broken tale,
  Singing many a tuneless song,
  Lavish of a heedless tongue. 
  Simple maiden, void of art,
  Babbling out the very heart,
  Yet abandoned to thy will,
  Yet imagining no ill,
  Yet too innocent to blush;
  Like the linnet in the bush,
  To the mother-linnet’s note
  Moduling her slender throat,
  Chirping forth thy pretty joys;
  Wanton in the change of toys,
  Like the linnet green, in May,
  Flitting to each bloomy spray;

  Wearied then, and glad of rest,
  Like the linnet in the nest. 
  This thy present happy lot,
  This, in time, will be forgot;
  Other pleasures, other cares,
  Ever-busy Time prepares;
  And thou shalt in thy daughter see
  This picture once resembled thee.

JOHN DYER

  GRONGAR HILL

  Silent Nymph, with curious eye! 
  Who, the purple evening, lie
  On the mountain’s lonely van,
  Beyond the noise of busy man;
  Painting fair the form of things,
  While the yellow linnet sings;
  Or the tuneful nightingale
  Charms the forest with her tale;
  Come, with all thy various hues,
  Come, and aid thy sister Muse;
  Now while Phoebus riding high
  Gives lustre to the land and sky! 
  Grongar Hill invites my song,
  Draw the landscape bright and strong;
  Grongar, in whose mossy cells
  Sweetly musing Quiet dwells;
  Grongar, in whose silent shade,
  For the modest Muses made,
  So oft I have, the evening still,
  At the fountain of a rill,
  Sate upon a flowery bed,
  With my hand beneath my head;
  While strayed my eyes o’er Towy’s flood. 
  Over mead, and over wood,
  From house to house, from hill to hill,
  ’Till Contemplation had her fill. 
  About his chequered sides I wind,
  And leave his brooks and meads behind,
  And groves, and grottoes where I lay,
  And vistas shooting beams of day: 
  Wide and wider spreads the vale,
  As circles on a smooth canal: 
  The mountains round—­unhappy fate! 
  Sooner or later, of all height,
  Withdraw their summits from the skies,
  And lessen as the others rise: 
  Still the prospect wider spreads,
  Adds a thousand woods and meads;
  Still it widens, widens still,
  And sinks the newly-risen hill.

  Now I gain the mountain’s brow,
  What a landscape lies below! 
  No clouds, no vapours intervene,
  But the gay, the open scene
  Does the face of nature shew,
  In all the hues of heaven’s bow! 
  And, swelling to embrace the light,
  Spreads around beneath the sight.