How cleanly do we feed and lie! Lord! what good hours do we keep! How quietly we sleep! What peace, what unanimity! How innocent from the lewd fashion Is all our business, all our recreation! O, how happy here's our leisure! By turns to come and visit yę! Dear solitude, the soul's best friend, That man acquainted with himself dost make, And would be glad to do so still, For it is thou alone that keep'st the soul awake. How calm and quiet a delight Is it, alone, To read and meditate and write, By none offended, and offending none! To walk, ride, sit, or sleep at one's own ease; O my beloved nymph, fair Dove, Princess of rivers, how I love Upon thy flowery banks to lie, And view thy silver stream, When gilded by a Summer's beam! Playing at liberty, And, with my angle, upon them The all of treachery I ever learned industriously to try! Such streams Rome's yellow Tiber cannot show, The Iberian Tagus, or Ligurian Po; The Retirement The Maese, the Danube, and the Rhine, The rapid Garonne and the winding Seine Beloved Dove, with thee To vie priority; Nay, Tame and Isis, when conjoined, submit, O my beloved rocks, that rise To awe the earth and brave the skies! Giddy with pleasure to look down; 1643 And from the vales to view the noble heights above; O my beloved caves! from dog-star's heat, And all anxieties, my safe retreat; What safety, privacy, what true delight, In the artificial light Your gloomy entrails make, Have I taken, do I take! How oft, when grief has made me fly, To hide me from society E'en of my dearest friends, have I, In your recesses' friendly shade, All my sorrows open laid, And my most secret woes intrusted to your privacy! Lord! would men let me alone, What an over-happy one Should I think myself to be Might I in this desert place, (Which most men in discourse disgrace) Live but undisturbed and free! Here, in this despised recess, Would I, maugre Winter's cold, And the Summer's worst excess, Try to live out to sixty full years old; And, all the while, Without an envious eye On any thriving under Fortune's smile, Contented live, and then contented die. Charles Cotton [1630-1687] THE COUNTRY FAITH HERE in the country's heart, Life is the same sweet life As it e'er hath been. Trust in a God still lives, And the bell at morn Floats with a thought of God O'er the rising corn. God comes down in the rain, And the crop grows tall This is the country faith And best of all! Norman Gale [1862 TRULY GREAT My walls outside must have some flowers, My walls within must have some books; A little gold that's sure each week; That comes not from my living kind, A lovely wife, and gentle too; Where she would in that stone cage live, A self-made prisoner, with me; The Cup While many a wild bird sang around, And she sometimes to answer them, With this small house, this garden large, Show me a man more great. William H. Davies [1870 EARLY MORNING AT BARGIS CLEAR air and grassy lea, Stream-song and cattle-bell- To live our days apart From green things and wide skies, And let the wistful heart Be cut and crushed with lies! Bright peaks! And suddenly Light floods the placid dell, So all is well! O man, what fools are we In prison-walls to dwell! Hermann Hagedorn [1882 THE CUP THE Cup I sing is a cup of gold With wine of a generous vintage, spilled 1645 In crystal currents and foaming tides Before the glowing mass was cold, And still he toiled at the antique mold, Turning it fast in his fashioning hand, Carving figures quaint and strange, Pursuing, through many a wondrous change, The symmetry of a plan divine. At last he poured the lustrous wine, And held aloft the goblet bright, Half in shadow, and wreathed in mist Of purple, amber, and amethyst. This is the goblet from whose brink The mother's breast, this wine must drain. Here Wisdom drowned her dangerous thought, The early gods their secrets brought; |