POEMS. 
THE INVITATION TO SELBORNE, 
EE Selborne spreads her boldest beauties 
rounds 
The varied valley^ and the mountain ground^ 
Wildly majestic ! what is all the pride 
Of flats, with loads of ornament supplied ? 
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 ; 
Through 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 Chinaes 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 beach-grown hill. 
To spend in tea the cool, refreshing hour, 
Where nods in air the pensile, nest-Uke bower 
A kind of arbour on the side of a liill. — G. W. 
