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No greater beauty can adorn 



The hamlet, than a grove of ancient oak. 



Ah ! how unlike their fires of elder times 

 The fons of Gallia now ! They in each tree 

 Dreading fome unknown power, dared not to lift 

 An axe : tho fcant of foil, they rather fought 

 For diftant herbage, than moleft their groves. 



Now all is fpoil, and violence. Where now 

 Exifts an oak, whofe venerable ftem 

 Has feen three centuries ? unlefs fome fteep, 

 To human footftep inacceffible, 

 Defend a favoured plant. Now if fome fire 

 Leave to his heir a foreft-fcene : that heir 

 With gracelefs hands hews down each awful trunk, 

 Worthy of Druid reverence ; there he rears 

 A paltry copfe, deftined, each twentieth year, 

 To blaze inglorious on the hearth. Hence woods, 

 Which flickered once the flag, and grifly boar 

 Scarce to the timorous hare fure refuge lend. 

 Farewell each rural virtue with the love 

 Of rural fcenes. Sage Contemplation wings 

 Her flight. No more from burning funs me fe&ks 

 A cool retreat. No more the poet fings, 

 Amid re-echoing groves, his moral lay. 



1 33. My guide (hewed me here, what I can call 

 only the fhell, or bark of a chefnut-tree, but 

 of fuch amazing circumference, that one of 

 the fhepherds . of the country ufed it as a fold 

 for a large flock of meep. 



215. Even the very gods inhabited groves. 

 215. The grove ufcd as a temple. 



217. 



