The muses' bower, embellished with the beauties of English poetry, Volume 3

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Page 149 - The noisy geese that gabbled o'er the pool, The playful children just let loose from school, The watch-dog's voice that bayed the whispering wind. And the loud laugh that spoke the vacant mind, These all in sweet confusion sought the shade, And filled each pause the nightingale had made.
Page 158 - Now lost to all — her friends, her virtue fled — Near her betrayer's door she lays her head, And, pinch'd with cold, and shrinking from the shower, With heavy heart deplores that luckless hour When idly first, ambitious of the town, She left her wheel, and robes of country brown.
Page 218 - If I am right, Thy grace impart Still in the right to stay ; If I am wrong, oh, teach my heart To find that better way!
Page 217 - Yet gave me, in this dark estate, To see the good from ill; And, binding nature fast in fate, Left free the human will.
Page 147 - Ill fares the land, to hastening ills a prey, Where wealth accumulates, and men decay : Princes and lords may flourish, or may fade ; A breath can make them, as a breath has made ; But a bold peasantry, their country's pride, When once destroyed, can never be supplied.
Page 146 - How often have I blest the coming day, When toil remitting lent its turn to play, And all the village train, from labour free, Led up their sports beneath the spreading tree ; While many a pastime circled in the shade, The young contending as the old surveyed ; And many a gambol frolicked o'er the ground, And sleights of art and feats of strength went round...
Page 155 - Not so the loss. The man of wealth and pride Takes up a space that many poor supplied — Space for his lake, his park's extended bounds, Space for his horses, equipage, and hounds ; The robe that wraps his limbs in silken sloth, Has robbed the neighbouring fields of half their growth; His seat, where solitary sports are seen, Indignant spurns the cottage from the green...
Page 140 - Stern o'er each bosom reason holds her state With daring aims irregularly great ; Pride in their port, defiance in their eye, I see the lords of human kind pass by...
Page 153 - For e'en though vanquish'd, he could argue still ; While words of learned length, and thundering sound, Amazed the gazing rustics ranged around ; And still they gazed, and still the wonder grew That one small head could carry all he knew. But past is all his fame. The very spot Where many a time he triumph'd, is forgot. Near yonder thorn, that lifts its head on high, Where once the sign-post caught the passing eye...
Page 221 - But wandering oft, with brute unconscious gaze, Man marks not Thee, marks not the mighty hand That, ever busy, wheels the silent spheres ; Works in the secret deep ; shoots steaming thence The fair profusion that o'erspreads the Spring...

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