Happy the first of men, ere yet confined
  To smoky cities; who in sheltering groves,
  Warm caves, and deep-sunk valleys lived and loved,
  By cares unwounded; what the sun and showers,
  And genial earth untillaged, could produce,
  They gathered grateful, or the acorn brown
  Or blushing berry; by the liquid lapse
  Of murmuring waters called to slake their thirst,
  Or with fair nymphs their sun-brown limbs to bathe;
  With nymphs who fondly clasped their favourite youths,
  Unawed by shame, beneath the beechen shade,
  Nor wiles nor artificial coyness knew. 
  Then doors and walls were not; the melting maid
  Nor frown of parents feared, nor husband’s threats;

Nor had cursed gold their tender hearts allured: 
Then beauty was not venal.  Injured Love,
Oh! whither, god of raptures, art thou fled?

* * * * *

What are the lays of artful Addison,
Coldly correct, to Shakespeare’s warblings wild? 
Whom on the winding Avon’s willowed banks
Fair Fancy found, and bore the smiling babe
To a close cavern (still the shepherds show
The sacred place, whence with religious awe
They hear, returning from the field at eve,
Strange whisperings of sweet music through the air). 
Here, as with honey gathered from the rock,
She fed the little prattler, and with songs
Oft soothed his wandering ears; with deep delight
On her soft lap he sat, and caught the sounds.

  Oft near some crowded city would I walk,
  Listening the far-off noises, rattling cars,
  Loud shouts of joy, sad shrieks of sorrow, knells
  Full slowly tolling, instruments of trade,
  Striking my ears with one deep-swelling hum. 
  Or wandering near the sea, attend the sounds
  Of hollow winds and ever-beating waves. 
  Even when wild tempests swallow up the plains,
  And Boreas’ blasts, big hail, and rains combine
  To shake the groves and mountains, would I sit,
  Pensively musing on th’ outrageous crimes
  That wake Heaven’s vengeance:  at such solemn hours,
  Demons and goblins through the dark air shriek,
  While Hecat, with her black-browed sisters nine,
  Bides o’er the Earth, and scatters woes and death. 
  Then, too, they say, in drear Egyptian wilds
  The lion and the tiger prowl for prey
  With roarings loud!  The listening traveller
  Starts fear-struck, while the hollow echoing vaults
  Of pyramids increase the deathful sounds.

  But let me never fail in cloudless nights,
  When silent Cynthia in her silver car
  Through the blue concave slides, when shine the hills,
  Twinkle the streams, and woods look tipped with gold,
  To seek some level mead, and there invoke