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A little rule, a little sway,
A sunbeam in a winter's day,
Is all the proud and mighty have
Between the cradle and the grave.

And see the rivers how they run,
Through woods and meads; in shade and

sun,

Sometimes swift, sometimes slow,
Wave succeeding wave, they go
A various journey to the deep,
Like human life to endless sleep!
Thus is Nature's vesture wrought,
To instruct our wandering thought;
Thus she dresses green and gay,
To disperse our cares away.

Ever charming, ever new,

When will the landscape tire the view!
The fountain's fall, the river's flow,
The woody valleys, warm and low;
The windy summit, wild and high,
Roughly rushing on the sky!
The pleasant seat, the ruined tower,
The naked rock, the shady bower;
The town and village, dome and farm,
Each give each a double charm,
As pearls upon an Æthiop's arm.

See on the mountain's southern side,
Where the prospect opens wide,
Where the evening gilds the tide;
How close and small the hedges lie!
What streaks of meadows cross the eye!
A step methinks may pass the stream,
So little distant dangers seem;
So we mistake the future's face,

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Eyed through hope's deluding glass;
As yon summits soft and fair,
Clad in colours of the air,
Which to those who journey near,
Barren, brown, and rough appear;
Still we tread the same coarse way,
The present's still a cloudy day.
O may I with myself agree,
And never covet what I see:
Content me with an humble shade,
My passions tamed, my wishes laid;
For while our wishes wildly roll,
We banish quiet from the soul:
'Tis thus the busy beat the air;
And misers gather wealth and care.
Now, even now, my joys run high,
As on the mountain-turf I lie;
While the wanton Zephyr sings,
And in the vale perfumes his wings;
While the waters murmur deep;
While the shepherd charms his sheep;
While the birds unbounded fly,
And with music fill the sky,
Now, even now, my joys run high.

Be full, ye courts, be great who will;
Search for peace with all your skill:
Open wide the lofty door,

Seek her on the marble floor,

In vain you search, she is not there;
In vain ye search the domes of Care!
Grass and flowers Quiet treads,
On the meads, and mountain-heads,
Along with Pleasure, close allied,
Ever by each other's side:

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And often, by the murmuring rill,
Hears the thrush, while all is still,
Within the groves of Grongar Hill.

THE RUINS OF ROME,

A POEM.

Aspice murorum moles, præruptaque saxa,
Obrutaque horrenti vasta theatra situ :

Hæc sunt Roma. Viden' velut ipsa cadavera tantæ
Urbis adhuc spirent imperiosa minas?

-Janus Vitalis.

ENOUGH of Grongar, and the shady dales
Of winding Towy, Merlin's fabled haunt,
I sung inglorious. Now the love of arts,
And what in metal or in stone remains
Of proud antiquity, through various realms
And various languages and ages famed,
Bears me remote, o'er Gallia's woody bounds,
O'er the cloud-piercing Alps remote; beyond
The vale of Arno purpled with the vine,
Beyond the Umbrian and Etruscan hills,
To Latium's wide champagne, forlorn and waste,
Where yellow Tiber his neglected wave
Mournfully rolls. Yet once again, my Muse,
Yet once again, and soar a loftier flight;
Lo the resistless theme, imperial Rome!

Fallen, fallen, a silent heap; her heroes all
Sunk in their urns; behold the pride of pomp,
The throne of nations fallen; obscured in dust;
Even yet majestical: the solemn scene
Elates the soul, while now the rising sun
Flames on the ruins in the purer air
Towering aloft, upon the glittering plain,
Like broken rocks, a vast circumference;

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Rent palaces, crushed columns, rifted moles,

Fanes rolled on fanes, and tombs on buried tombs.
Deep lies in dust the Theban obelisk,
Immense along the waste; minuter art,
Glyconian 1 forms, or Phidian, subtly fair,
O'erwhelming; as the immense Leviathan
The finny brood, when near Ierne's shore
Out-stretched, unwieldy, his island length appears,
Above the foamy flood. Globose and huge,
Grey-mouldering temples swell, and wide o'ercast
The solitary landscape, hills and woods,

And boundless wilds; while the vine-mantled brows
The pendant goats unveil, regardless they

Of hourly peril, though the clefted domes
Tremble to every wind. The pilgrim oft
At dead of night, 'mid his orison hears
Aghast the voice of time, disparting towers,
Tumbling all precipitate down-dashed,

Rattling around, loud thundering to the moon:
While murmurs soothe each awful interval
Of ever-falling waters; shrouded Nile,
Eridanus, and Tiber with his twins,

And palmy Euphrates; 2 they with dropping locks,
Hang o'er their urns, and mournfully among
The plaintive-echoing ruins pour their streams.

Yet here adventurous in the sacred search
Of ancient arts, the delicate of mind,
Curious and modest, from all climes resort,
Grateful society! with these I raise,
The toilsome step up the proud Palatine,
Through spiry cypress groves, and towering pine,
Waving aloft o'er the big ruin's brows,

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1 Glycon, Phidias, Grecian sculptors.-2 Fountains at Rome adorned with the statues of those rivers.

On numerous arches reared; and frequent stopped, 56
The sunk ground startles me with dreadful chasm,
Breathing forth darkness from the vast profound
Of aisles and halls, within the mountain's womb.
Nor these the nether works; all these beneath,
And all beneath the vales and hills around,
Extend the caverned sewers, massy, firm,
As the Sibylline grot beside the dead
Lake of Avernus; such the sewers huge,
Whither the great Tarquinian genius dooms
Each wave impure; and proud with added rains,
Hark how the mighty billows lash their vaults,
And thunder; how they heave their rocks in vain!
Though now incessant time has rolled around
A thousand winters o'er the changeful world,
And yet a thousand since, the indignant floods
Roar loud in their firm bounds, and dash and swell,
In vain; conveyed to Tiber's lowest wave.

Hence, over airy plains, by crystal founts,

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That weave their glittering waves with tuneful lapse,
Among the sleeky peebles, agate clear,
Cerulian ophite, and the flowery vein
Of orient jasper, pleased I move along,
And vases bossed and huge inscriptive stones,
And intermingling vines; and figured nymphs,
Floras and Chloes of delicious mould,
Cheering the darkness; and deep empty tombs,
And dells, and mouldering shrines, with old decay
Rustic and green, and wide-embowering shades,
Shot from the crooked clefts of nodding towers;
A solemn wilderness! With error sweet,
I wind the lingering step, where'er the path
Mazy conducts me, which the vulgar foot
O'er sculptures maimed has made; Anubis, Sphinx,

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