POEMS. 1 



The Invitation 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 ornament supply 1 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 1 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-crowned ; 

 O'er the gay lawn the flowery 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; * 

 Or where the hermit hangs the straw-clad cell^ 

 Emerging gently from the leafy dell; 



1 Reprinted from the edition of 1813. 

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



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

 occasion to appear in the character of a hermit. 



