JOHN DYER GRONGAR HILL SILENT nymph, with curious eye! 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 dues, Come and aid thy sister Muse; Now, while Phœbus riding high, Draw the landscape bright and strong; Sweetly musing Quiet dwells; 5 ΤΟ 15 20 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, About his chequered sides I wind, As circles on a smooth canal: The mountains round, unhappy fate! 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! Old castles on the cliffs arise, Rushing from the woods, the spires And glitters on the broken rocks! Below me trees unnumbered rise, Beautiful in various dyes: The gloomy pine, the poplar blue, The yellow beech, the sable yew, The slender fir that taper grows, The sturdy oak with broad-spread boughs. Haunt of Phyllis, queen of love! Gaudy as the opening dawn, 50 55 60 65 Lies a long and level lawn, On which a dark hill, steep and high, His sides are clothed with waving wood, That cast an awful look below; Whose ragged walls the ivy creeps, And with her arms from falling keeps; So both a safety from the wind On mutual dependence find. 70 75 80 85 90 95 100 'Tis now the raven's bleak abode; Has seen this broken pile complete, But transient is the smile of Fate! A little rule, a little sway, A sunbeam in a winter's day, And see the rivers how they run, Through woods and meads, in shade and sun, Wave succeeding wave they go Ever charming, ever new, When will the landscape tire the view! The fountain's fall, the rivers flow, See on the mountain's southern side, Clad in colours of the air, Which to those who journey near, Still we tread the same coarse way, The present's still a cloudy day. O may I with myself agree, And never covet what I see; 105 ΙΙΟ 115 120 125 130 Content me with an humble shade, My passions tamed, my wishes laid; |