mVITATIOlS' TO SELBORNE, 



See, Selborne spreads her boldest beauties round 

 The varied valley, and the mountain ground, 

 Wildly majestic ! What is all the pride 

 Of flats, with loads of ornaments supplied ? — 

 Unpleasing, tasteless, impotent expense, 

 Compared with Nature's rude magnificence. 



Arise, my stranger, to these wild scenes haste ; 

 The unfinish'd farm awaits your forming taste : 

 Plan the pavilion, airy, light, and true ; 

 Through the high arch call in the lengthening view 5 

 Expand the forest sloping up the hill ; 

 Swell to a lake the scant, penurious rill ; 

 Extend the vista ; raise the castle mound 

 In antique taste, with turrets ivy-crown'd : 

 O'er the gay lawn the flow'ry shrub dispread, 

 Or with the blending garden mix the mead ; 

 Bid China's pale, fantastic fence dehght ; 

 Or with the mimic statue trap the sight. •" 



Oft on some evening, sunny, soft, and still, 

 The Muse shall lead thee to the beech-grown hill, 

 To spend in tea the cool, refreshing hour. 

 Where nods in air the pensile, nest-like bower ; * 

 Or where the hermit hangs the straw-clad cell,t 

 Emerging gently from the leafy dell, 



* A kind of arbour on the side of a hill, 

 t A grotesque building, contrived by a young gentleman, who used ou 

 oo:asion to appear in the character of a hermit, 



b2 



