POEMS ON HIS LADY.

TO MISS CRACROFT.

THE COMPLAINT OF HER RING-DOVE.

1759.

• Far from the smiles of blue hesperian skies, Far from those vales where flowery pleasures

dwell, (Dear scenes of freedom, lost to these sad eyes,)

How hard to languish in this lonely cell !

• When genial gales relume the fires of love, When laughing Spring leads round the jocund

year; Ah! view with pity, gentle maid, your dove,

From every heart-felt joy secluded here !

• To me no more the laughing Spring looks gay ;

Nor annual loves relume my languid breast ; Time slowly drags the long, delightless day,

Through one dull scene of solitary rest.

6

Ah! what avails, that dreaming Fancy roves

Through the wild beauties of her native reign! Breathes in green fields, and feeds in freshening

groves, To wake to anguish in this hopeless chain?

• Though fondly sooth'd with Pity's tenderest care,

Though still by Nancy's gentle hand carest, For the free forest and the boundless air,

The rebel, Nature, murmurs in my breast,

“Ah, let not Nature, Nancy, plead in vain!

For kindness sure should grace a form so fair : Restore me to my native wilds again,

To the free forest and the boundless air.'

TO MISS CRACROFT.

WRAPPED ROUND A NOSEGAY OF VIOLETS.

1761.

Dear object of my late and early prayer!
Source of my joy, and solace of my care !
Whose gentle friendship such a charm can give,
As makes me wish, and tells me how to live.
To thee the Muse with grateful hand would bring
These first fair children of the doubtful Spring.
O may they, fearless of a varying sky,
Bloom on thy breast, and smile beneath thine eye!
In fairer lights their vivid blue display,
And sweeter breathe their little lives away!

TO MISS CRACROFT:

ON THE MORAL REFLECTIONS CONTAINED IN HER

ANSWER TO THE ABOVE VERSES.

1761. Sweet moralist! whose moving truths impart At once delight and anguish to my heart: Though human joys their short-liv'd sweets exhale, Like the wan beauties of the wasted vale ; [last, Yet trust the Muse, fair Friendship's flower shall When life's short sunshine, like its storms, is past; Bloom in the fields of some ambrosial shore, Where Time, and Death, and Sickness are no more!

AUTUMNAL ELEGY.

TO MISS CRACROFT.

1763. While yet my poplar yields a doubtful shade,

Its last leaves trembling to the Zephyr's sigh ; On this fair plain ere every verdure fade,

Or the last smiles of golden Autumn die ;

Wilt thou, my Nancy, at this pensive hour,

O’er Nature's ruin hear thy friend comptain ; While his heart labours with the inspiring power,

And from his pen spontaneous flows the strain?

Thy gentle breast shall melt with kindred sighs,

Yet haply grieving o'er a Parent's bier ; Poets are Nature's children; when she dies, Affection mourns; and Duty drops a tear.

Why are ye silent, brethren of the grove,

Fond Philomel, thy many-chorded lyre So sweetly tun'd to tenderness and love,

Shall love no more, or tenderness inspire ? O mix once more thy gentle lays with mine ;

For well our passions, well our notes agree: An absent love, sweet bird, may soften thine ;

An absent love demands a tear from me.

Yet, ere ye slumber, songsters of the sky,

Through the long night of winter wild and drear; O let us tune, ere Love and Fancy die,

One tender farewell to the fading year. Farewell, ye wild hills, scatter'd o'er with spring!

Sweet solitudes, where Flora smild unseen: Farewell, each breeze of balmy-burden'd wing!

The violet's blue bank, and the tall wood green! Ye tuneful groves of Belvidere, adieu !

Kind shades that whisper o'er my Craufurd's rest!" From courts, from senates, and from camps to you,

When Fancy leads him, no inglorious guest. Dear shades adieu ! where late the moral Muse,

Led by the dryad, Silence, oft reclin'd; Taught Meanness to extend her little views,

And look on Nature to enlarge her mind. Farewell, the walk along the woodland-vale !

Flower-feeding rills in murmurs drawn away! Farewell, the sweet breath of the early gale!

And the dear glories of the closing day!

• Sec Enlargement of the Mind, p. 145.