POEMS. 499 



THE 



INVITATION TO SELBORNE*. 



SHE Sclborne spreads her boldest beauties round 

 The varied valley, and the mountain ground, 

 Wildly majestic! what is all the pride 

 Of flats, with loads of ornament supply'd? 

 Unpleasing, tasteless, impotent expense, 

 Compared with nature's rude magnificence. 



Arise, my stranger, to these wild scenes haste ; 

 The unfinished farm awaits your forming taste : 

 Plan the pavilion, airy, light and true; 

 Thro' the high arch call in the lengthening view ; 

 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-erown'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, delight, 

 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 ; a 

 Or where the Hermit hangs the straw-clad cell, b 

 Emerging gently from the leafy dell, 

 By fancy plann'd ; as once th' inventive maid 

 Met the hoar sage amid the secret shade ; 

 llomantic spot ! from whence in prospect lies 

 Whate'er of landscape charms our feasting eyes ; 

 The pointed spire, the hall, the pasture-plain. 

 The russet fallow, or the golden grain, 



* [These pleasing lines were written to his nephew, Samuel Barker, 

 -T. B.] 



a A kind of an arbour on the side of a hill. 



b A grotesque building, contrived by a young gentleman, "who used on 

 occasion to appear in the character of an hermit. 



