THE PLEASURES OF RETIREMENT.

THE man, who, from the world escaped,

In still retreats and flow'ry solitudes,

To Nature's voice attends, from month to month,
And day to day, through the revolving year;
Admiring, sees her in her ev'ry shape,
Feels all her sweet emotions at his heart;
Takes what she lib'ral gives, nor thinks of more.
He, when young Spring protrudes the bursting gems,
Marks the first bud, and sucks the healthful gale
Into his freshen'd soul; her genial hours
He full enjoys; and not a beauty blows,
And not an op'ning blossom breathes, in vain.

THOMSON.

THE BANKS OF THE WYE.

FIVE years have pass'd; five summers, with the length
Of five long winters! and again I hear

These waters, rolling from their mountain springs
With a sweet inland murmur. Once again

Do I behold these steep and lofty cliffs,
Which on a wild secluded scene impress
Thoughts of more deep seclusion.

Though absent long,
These forms of beauty have not been to me
As is a landscape to a blind man's eye;
But oft in lonely rooms, and 'mid the din
Of towns and cities, I have owed to them,
In hours of weariness sensations sweet.

When the fretful stir

Unprofitable, and the fever of the world,

Have hung upon the beatings of my heart-
How oft, in spirit, have I turned to thee,

O sylvan Wye! .

To look on Nature, not

Of thoughtless youth..

For I have learned as in the hour

And I have felt

A presence that disturbs me with the joy
Of elevated thoughts; a sense sublime
Of something far more deeply interfused,
Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns,
And the round ocean and the living air,
And the blue sky, and in the mind of man :
A motion and a spirit, that impels

All thinking things, all objects of all thought,
And rolls through all things.

Thou art with me here upon the banks
Of this fair river; thou, my dearest Friend,
My dear, dear Friend, and in thy voice I catch
The language of my former heart, and read
My former pleasures in the shooting lights.

Of thy wild eyes. Oh! yet a little while
May I behold in thee what I was once,
My dear, dear Sister!

Therefore let the moon

Shine on thee in thy solitary walk;

And let the misty mountain winds be free
To blow against thee: and, in after years,

If solitude, or fear, or pain, or grief,

Should be thy portion, with what healing thoughts