And warms the bosom; till at last, sublimed
To rapture and enthusiastic heat,
We feel the present Deity, and taste
The joy of Gor to see a happy world!
These are the sacred feelings of thy heart,
Thy heart informed by reason's purer ray,
O Lyttelton, the friend! thy passions thus
And meditations vary, as at large,
Courting the Muse, through Hagley Park thou strayest, Thy British Tempé! there along the dale,
With woods o'erhung, and shagged with mossy rocks,
Whence on each hand the gushing waters play,
And down the rough cascade white dashing fall,
Or gleam in lengthened vista through the trees.
You silent steal; or sit beneath the shade
Of solemn oaks, that tuft the swelling mounts
Thrown graceful round by Nature's careless hand,
And pensive listen to the various voice
Of rural peace: the herds, the flocks, the birds,
The hollow-whispering breeze, the plaint of rills,
That, purling down amid the twisted roots
Which creep around, their dewy murmurs shake
On the soothed ear. From these abstracted oft,
You wander through the philosophic world;
Where in bright train continual wonders rise,
Or to the curious or the pious eye.
And eft, conducted by historic truth,
You tread the long extent of backward time:
Planning, with warm benevolence of mind
And honest zeal, unwarped by party rage,
Britannia's weal; how from the venal gulf
To raise her virtue, and her arts revive.
Or, turning thence thy view, these graver thoughts The Muses charm: while, with sure taste refined, 930 You draw th' inspiring breath of ancient song;
Till nobly rises, emulous, thy own
Perhaps thy loved Lucinda shares thy walk,
With soul to thine attuned. Then Nature all
Wears to the lover's eye a look of love
And all the tumult of a guilty world,
Tossed by ungenerous passions, sinks away.
The tender heart is animated peace;
And as it pours its copious treasures forth,
In varied converse, softening every theme,
You, frequent pausing, turn, and from her eyes,
Where meekened sense, and amiable grace,
And lively sweetness dwell, enraptured, drink
That nameless spirit of ethereal joy,
Unutterable happiness! which love
Alone bestows, and on a favored few.
Meantime you gain the height, from whose fair brow
The bursting prospect spreads immense around:
And snatched c ́er hill and dale, and wood and lawn.
And verdant field, and darkening heath between, 950
And villages embosomed soft in trees,
And spiry towns by surging columns marked
Of household smoke, your eye excursive roams
Wide-stretching from the hall, in whose kind haunt
The Hospitable Genius lingers still,
To where the broken landscape, by degrees
Ascending, roughens into rigid hills;
O'er which the Cambrian mountains, like far clouds
That skirt the blue horizon, dusky rise.
Flushed by the spirit of the genial year,
Now from the virgin's cheek a fresher bloom
Shoots, less and less, the live carnation round;
Her lips blush deeper sweets; she breathes of youth; The shining moisture swells into her eyes,
In brighter flow; her wishing bosom heaves
With palpitations wild; kind tumults seize
Her veins, and all her yielding soul is love.
From the keen gaze her lover turns away,
Full of the dear, ecstatic power, and sick
With sighing languishment. Ah then, ye fair. 970
Be greatly cautious of your sliding hearts:
Dare not th' infectious sigh; the pleading look,
Downcast and low, in meek submission dressed,
But full of guile. Let not the fervent tongue,
Prompt to deceive, with adulation smooth,
Gain on your purposed will. Nor in the bower,
Where woodbines flaunt, and roses shed a couch,
While Evening draws her crimson curtains round,
Trust your soft minutes with betraying Man.
And let th' aspiring youth beware of love,
Of the smooth glance beware; for 'tis too late,
When on his heart the torrent softness pours;
Then wisdom prostrate lies, and fading fame
Dissolves in air away; while the fond soul,
Wrapped in gay visions of unreal bliss,
Still paints th' illusive form; the kindling grace;
Th' enticing smile; the modest-seeming eye,
Beneath whose beauteous beams, belying heaven,
Lurk searchless cunning, cruelty, and death:
And still, false-warbling in his cheated ear,
Her siren voice, enchanting, draws him on
To guileful shores and meads of fatal joy.
E'en present, in the very lap of love
Inglorious laid; while music flows around,
Perfumes, and oils, and wine, and wanton hours; 995 Amid the roses fierce Repentance rears
Her snaky crest; a quick-returning pang
Shoots through the conscious heart; where honor still
And great design, against th' oppressive load
Of luxury, by fits, impatient heave.
But absent, what fantastic woes, aroused,
Rage in each thought, by restless musing fed,
Chill the warm cheek, and blast the bloom of life?
Neglected fortune flies; and, sliding swift,
Prone into ruin, fall his scorned affairs.
"Tis nought but gloom around: the darkened sun
Loses his light. The rosy-bosomed Spring
To weeping fancy pines; and yon bright arch,
Contracted, bends into a dusky vault.
All Nature fades extinct; and she alone,
Heard, felt, and seen, possesses every thought,
Fills every sense, and pants in every vein.
Books are but formal dulness, tedious friends,
And sad amid the social band he sits,
Lonely, and inattentive. From his tongue
Th' unfinished period falls: while, borne away
On swelling thought, his wafted spirit flies
To the vain bosom of his distant fair;
And leaves the semblance of a lover, fixed
In melancholy site, with head declined,
And love-dejected eyes. Sudden he starts,
Shook from his tender trance, and restless runs
To glimmering shades and sympathetic glooms;
Where the dun umbrage o'er the falling stream,
Romantic, hangs: there through the pensive dusk
Strays, in heart-thrilling meditation lost,
Indulging all to love: or on the bank
Thrown, amid drooping lilies, swells the breeze
With sighs unceasing, and the brook with tears.
Thus in soft anguish he consumes the day,
Nor quits his deep retirement, till the Moon
Peeps through the chambers of the fleecy east,
Enlightened by degrees, and in her train
Leads on the gentle Hours; then forth he walks,
Beneath the trembling languish of her beam,
With softened soul, and woos the bird of eve
To mingle woes with his or, while the world
And all the sons of care lie hushed in sleep,
Associates with the midnight shadows drear;
And, sighing to the lonely taper, pours
His idly-tortured heart into the page,
Meant for the moving messenger of love;
Where rapture burns on rapture, every line
With rising frenzy fired. But if on bed
Delirious flung, sleep from his pillow flies,
All night he tosses, nor the balmy power
In any posture finds; till the gray Morn
Lifts her pale lustre on the paler wretch,
Exanimate by love and then, perhaps,
Exhausted Nature sinks awhile to rest,
Still interrupted by distracted dreams.
That o'er the sick imagination rise,
And in black colors paint the mimic scene.
Oft with th' enchantress of his soul he talks;
Sometimes in crowds distressed; or if retired
To secret, winding, flower-enwoven bowers,
Far from the dull impertinence of Man,
Just as he, credulous, his endless cares
Begins to lose in blind oblivious love,
Snatched from her yielded hand, he knows not how.
Through forests huge, and long untraveled heaths 1061
With desolation brown, he wanders waste,
In night and tempest wrapped; or shrinks aghast,
Back, from the bending precipice; or wades
The turbid stream below, and strives to reach
The farther shore; where, succorless and sad,
She with extended arms his aid implores;
But strives in vain; borne by th' outrageous flood
To distance down, he rides the ridgy wave,
Or, whelmed beneath the boiling eddy, sinks. 1070
These are the charming agonies of love,
Whose misery delights. But through the heart
Should jealousy its venom once diffuse,
"Tis then delightful misery no more,
But agony unmixed, incessant gall,
Corroding every thought, and blasting all
Love's paradise. Ye fairy prospects, then,
Ye beds of roses, and ye bowers of joy,
Farewell! ye gleamings of departed peace,
Shine out your last! the yellow-tinging plague 1030 Internal vision taints, and in a night
Of livid gloom imagination wraps.
Ah, then instead of love-enlivened cheeks,
Of sunny features, and of ardent eyes
With flowing rapture bright, dark looks succeed, 1985 Sutfused and glaring with untender fire,
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