POEMS. 
* 
THE mVITATIOl^ 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] 
TJnpleasing, tasteless, impotent expense. 
Compared with Nature's rude magnificence. 
Arise, my stranger, to these wild scenes haste ; 
The unfinish'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 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,f 
Emerging gently from the leafy dell ; 
By Fancy plann'd; as once the' inventive maid 
Met the hoar sage amid the secret shade ; 
Eomantic 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, 
* A kind of an arbour on the side of a hill, 
t A grotesque building, contrived by a young gentl<;man, who used on occasion 
to appear in the character of a hermit. 
