No borrow'd joys: they're all our own, While to the world we live unknown, Or by the world forgot: Monarchs! we envy not your state, We look with pity on the great, And bless our humbler lot. Our portion is not large indeed, For nature's calls are few! And make that little do. We'll therefore relish with content Nor aim beyond our pow'r; For if our stock be very small, 'Tis prudent to enjoy it all, Nor lose the present hour. To be resign'd when ills betide, And pleas’d with favours giv'n, Whose fragrance smells to heav'n. We'll ask no long protracted treat But when our feast is o'er, The relics of our store. Thus hand in hand through life we'll go, Its chequer'd paths of joy and woe With cautious steps we'll tread; Quit its vain scenes without a tear, Without a trouble or a fear, And mingle with the dead: Wbile conscience, like a faithful friend, And cheer our dying breath; And smooth the bed of death. HYMN ON SOLITUDE. BY THOMSON. Hail, mildly-pleasing Solitude! Oh! how I love with thee to walk, A thousand shapes you wear with ease, And still in every shape you please. Now, wrapt in some mysterious dream, A lone philosopher you seem; Now quick from hill to vale you fly, And now you sweep the vaulted sky. A shepherd next, you haunt the plain, And warble forth your oaten strain. A lover now, with all the grace Of that sweet passion in your face: Then, calm’d to friendship, you assume The gentle-looking Hartford's bloom, As, with her Musidora, she (Her Musidora fond of thee) Amid the long-withdrawing vale Awakes the rivall’d nightingale. Thine is the balmy breath of morn, Descending angels bless thy train, Oh! let me pierce thy secret cell, ELEGY, Written in a Country Church-yard. BY GRAY. The curfew tolls the knell of parting day, The lowing herd winds slowly o'er the lea, The plowman homeward plods his weary way, And leaves the world to darkness and to me. Now fades the glimmering landscape on the sight, And all the air a solemn stillness holds, Save where the beetle wheels his drony flight, And drowsy tinklings lull the distant folds; Save that, from yonder ivy-mantled tow'r, The moping owl does to the moon complain Of such as, wandering near her sacred bow'r, Molest her ancient solitary reign. Beneath those rugged elms, that yew-tree's shade, Where heaves the turf in many a mould'ring heap, Each in his narrow cell for ever laid, The rude forefathers of the hamlet sleep. The breezy call of incense-breathing morn, The swallow twittring from the straw-built shed, The cock's shrill clarion, or the echoing horn, No more shall rouse them from their lowly bed. |