POEMS. 



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 supplied ? 

 Unpleasing, tastleless, impotent expense, 

 Compared with Nature's rude magnificence. 



Arise, my stranger, to these wild scenes haste ; 

 The unfmish'd farm awaits your forming taste : 

 Plan the pavilion, airy, light, and true ; 

 Through the high arch call in the length'ning 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-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 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,f 

 Emerging gently from the leafy dell, 

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

 Met the hoar sage amid the secret shade : 



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



f A grotesque building, contrived by a young gentleman, who 

 used on occasion to appear in the character of a hermit. 



