THE RETIREMENT. 



How calm and quiet a delight 



It is alone 

 To read, and meditate, and write. 

 By none offended, and offending none ! 

 To walk, ride, sit, or sleep at one's own ease, 

 And pleasing a man's self, none other to displease ! 



VI. 

 Oh my beloved nymph ! fair Dove ; 

 Princess of rivers, how I love 

 Upon thy flowery banks to lie ; 



And view thy silver stream, 

 When gilded by a summer's beam, 

 And in it all thy wanton fry 



Playing at liberty, 

 And with my angle upon them 



The all of treachery 

 I ever learnt, industriously to try.* 



VII. 

 Such streams Rome's yellow Tyber cannot show, 

 Th' Iberian Tagus, nor Ligurian Po ; 



The Meuse, the Danube, and the Rhine 

 Are puddle-water all compar'd with thine ; 

 And Loire's pure streams yet too polluted are 



With thine, much purer to compare ; 

 The rapid Garonne, and the winding Seine, 



Are both too mean, 

 Beloved Dove, with thee 

 To vie priority ; 

 Nay, Tame and Isis, when conjoin'd, submit, 

 And lay their trophies at thy silver feet. 



viir. 



Oh my beloved rocks ! that rise 

 To awe the earth, and brave the skies, 

 From some aspiring mountain's crown, 

 How dearly do I love. 

 Giddy with pleasure, to look dovni ; 

 And, from the vales to view the noble heights above ! 



IX. 

 Oh my beloved caves ! from dog-star's heat 

 And all anxieties, my safe retreat : ° 

 What safety, privacy, what true delight, 

 In the artificial night, 

 Your gloomy entrails make. 

 Have I taken, do I take I 



VARIATIONS. 



4 I ever learn'd to practise and to try 1 

 ^ And hotter persecution safe retreats. 



