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Must Delia's softness, elegance, and ease

Submit to Marian's dress? to Marian's gold? Must Marian's robe from distant India please? The simple fleece my Delia's limbs enfold? 'Yet sure on Delia seems the russet fair;

Ye glittering daughters of disguise, adieu!' So talk the wise, who judge of shape and air, But will the rural thane decide so true? Ah! what is native worth esteem'd of clowns ? 'Tis thy false glare, O Fortune! thine they see; "Tis for my Delia's sake I dread thy frowns, And my last gasp shall curses breathe on thee.

SHENSTONE.

HIS RECANTATION.

No more the Muse obtrudes her thin disguise,
No more with awkward fallacy complains
How every fervour from my bosom flies,
And Reason in her lonesome palace reigns.
Ere the chill winter of our days arrive,

No more she paints the breast from passion free; I feel, I feel one loitering wish survive;

Ah! need I, Florio, name that wish to thee? The star of Venus ushers in the day,

The first, the loveliest of the train that shine! The star of Venus lends her brightest ray, When other stars their friendly beams resign. Still in my breast one soft desire remains, Pure as that star, from guilt, from interest free; Has gentle Delia tripp'd across the plains,

And need I, Florio, name that wish to thee?

While, cloy'd to find the scenes of life the same, I tune with careless hand my languid lays, Some secret impulse wakes my former flame,

And fires my strain with hopes of brighter days. I slept not long beneath yon rural bowers,

And lo! my crook with flowers adorn'd I see ; Has gentle Delia bound my crook with flowers, And need I, Florio, name my hopes to thee?

SHENSTONE.

ΤΟ

DELIA, WITH SOME FLOWERS:

COMPLAINING HOW MUCH HIS BENEVOLENCE SUFFERS
ON ACCOUNT OF HIS HUMBLE FORTUNE.

WHATE'ER Could Sculpture's curious art employ,
Whate'er the lavish hand of Wealth can shower,
These would I give-and every gift enjoy
That pleased my fair-but Fate denies my power.
Bless'd were my lot to feed the social fires!
To learn the latent wishes of a friend!
To give the boon his native taste admires,
And for my transport on his smile depend!
Bless'd too is he whose evening ramble strays
Where droop the sons of Indigence and Care!
His little gifts their gladden'd eyes amaze,

And win, at small expense, their fondest prayer! And, oh! the joy, to shun the conscious light;

To spare the modest blush; to give unseen: Like showers that fall behind the veil of night,

Yet deeply tinge the smiling vales with green.

But happiest they who drooping realms relieve!
Whose virtues in our cultured vales appear!
For whose sad fate a thousand shepherds grieve,
And fading fields allow the grief sincere.
To call lost Worth from its oppressive shade,
To fix its equal sphere, and see it shine;
To hear it grateful own the generous aid;
This, this is transport-but must ne'er be mine!
Faint is my bounded bliss; nor I refuse

To range where daisies open, rivers roll,
While prose or song the languid hours amuse,
And soothe the fond impatience of my soul.
A while I'll weave the roofs of jasmine bowers,
And urge with trivial cares the loitering year;
A while I'll prune my grove, protect my flowers,
Then, unlamented, press an early bier!

Of these loved flowers the lifeless corse may share, Some hireling hand a fading wreath bestow; The rest will breathe as sweet, will glow as fair

As when their master smiled to see them glow, The sequent morn shall wake the silvan quire;

The kid again shall wanton ere 'tis noon; Nature will smile, will wear her best attire O, let not gentle Delia smile so soon! While the rude hearse conveys me slow away,

And careless eyes my vulgar fate proclaim, Let thy kind tear my utmost worth o'erpay, And, softly sighing, vindicate my fame.O Delia! cheer'd by thy superior praise,

I bless the silent path the fates decree; Pleased from the list of my inglorious days

To rase the moments crown'd with bliss and thee.

SHENSTONE.

STANZAS TO

THOUGH the day of my destiny's over,
And the star of my fate hath declined,
Thy soft heart hath refused to discover
The faults which so many could find;
Though thy soul with my grief was acquainted,
It shrunk not to share it with me,
And the love which my spirit hath painted
It never hath found but in thee.

Then when nature around me is smiling
The last smile which answers to mine,
I do not believe it beguiling,

Because it reminds me of thine;

And when winds are at war with the ocean,
As the breasts I believed in with me,
If their billows excite an emotion,
It is that they bear me from thee.

Though the rock of my last hope is shiver'd,
And its fragr ents are sunk in the wave,
Though I feel that my soul is delivered
To pain-it shall not be its slave.
There is many a pang to pursue me:

They may crush but they shall not contemnThey may torture, but shall not subdue me— "Tis of thee that I think-not of them.

Though human, thou didst not deceive me, Though woman, thou didst not forsake, Though loved, thou forbarest to grieve me, Though slander'd, thou never couldst shake;

Though trusted, thou didst not disclaim me,
Though parted, it was not to fly,

Though watchful, 'twas not to defame me,
Nor mute, that the world might belie.
Yet I blame not the world, nor despise it,
Nor the war of the many with one-
If my soul was not fitted to prize it,

'Twas folly not sooner to shun:
And if dearly that error hath cost me,
And more than I once could foresee,
I have found that, whatever it lost me,
It could not deprive me of thee.

From the wreck of the past, which hath perish'd,
Thus much I at least may recall,

It hath taught me that what I most cherish'd
Deserved to be dearest of all:

In the desert a fountain is springing,
In the wide waste there still is a tree,
And a bird in the solitude singing,
Which speaks to my spirit of thee.

LORD BYRON.

LOVE ELEGY.

Now sunk in dumb despondence on the thorn,
Where nightly perch'd she pours her solemn lay,
Sad Philomel beholds the gradual morn,
Bright and yet brighter, kindle into day.

Sweet child of sorrow! with regret, like thine,
I too yon gold, that skirts the dapple, see;
No joy the gleams that now more ruddy shine,
Dear as the joy that flies them, bring to me.

VOL. IV.

K

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