XIII

All hail, ye scenes that o’er my soul prevail, Ye [splendid] friths and lakes which, far away, Are by smooth Annan fill’d, or pastoral Tay, Or Don’s romantic springs; at distance, hail!  The time shall come when I, perhaps, may tread Your lowly glens, o’erhung with spreading broom, Or o’er your stretching heaths by fancy led [Or o’er your mountains creep, in awful gloom:] Then will I dress once more the faded bower.  Where Jonson sat in Drummond’s [classic] shade, Or crop from Teviot’s dale each [lyric flower] And mourn on Yarrow’s banks [where Willy’s laid!] Meantime, ye Powers that on the plains which bore The cordial youth, on Lothian’s plains, attend, Where’er he dwell, on hill or lowly muir, To him I lose your kind protection lend, And, touched with love like mine, preserve my absent friend!

THOMAS WARTON

  FROM THE PLEASURES OF MELANCHOLY

  Beneath yon ruined abbey’s moss-grown piles
  Oft let me sit, at twilight hour of eve,
  Where through some western window the pale moon
  Pours her long-levelled rule of streaming light,
  While sullen, sacred silence reigns around,
  Save the lone screech-owl’s note, who builds his bower
  Amid the mouldering caverns dark and damp,
  Or the calm breeze that rustles in the leaves
  Of flaunting ivy, that with mantle green
  Invests some wasted tower.  Or let me tread
  Its neighbouring walk of pines, where mused of old
  The cloistered brothers:  through the gloomy void
  That far extends beneath their ample arch
  As on I pace, religious horror wraps
  My soul in dread repose.  But when the world
  Is clad in midnight’s raven-coloured robe,
  ’Mid hollow charnel let me watch the flame
  Of taper dim, shedding a livid glare
  O’er the wan heaps, while airy voices talk
  Along the glimmering walls, or ghostly shape,
  At distance seen, invites with beckoning hand,
  My lonesome steps through the far-winding vaults. 
  Nor undelightful is the solemn noon
  Of night, when, haply wakeful, from my couch
  I start:  lo, all is motionless around! 
  Roars not the rushing wind; the sons of men
  And every beast in mute oblivion lie;
  All nature’s hushed in silence and in sleep: 
  O then how fearful is it to reflect
  That through the still globe’s awful solitude
  No being wakes but me! till stealing sleep
  My drooping temples bathes in opiate dews. 
  Nor then let dreams, of wanton folly born,
  My senses lead through flowery paths of joy: 
  But let the sacred genius of the night
  Such mystic visions send as Spenser saw
  When through bewildering Fancy’s magic maze,
  To the fell house of Busyrane, he led
  Th’ unshaken Britomart; or Milton knew,
  When in abstracted thought he first conceived
  All Heaven in tumult, and the seraphim
  Come towering, armed in adamant and gold.