How bless’d, delicious Scene! the eye that greets 120
  Thy open beauties, or thy lone retreats;
  Th’ unwearied sweep of wood thy cliffs that scales,
  The never-ending waters of thy vales;
  The cots, those dim religious groves enbow’r,
  Or, under rocks that from the water tow’r 125
  Insinuated, sprinkling all the shore,
  Each with his household boat beside the door,
  Whose flaccid sails in forms fantastic droop,
  Bright’ning the gloom where thick the forests stoop;
 —­Thy torrents shooting from the clear-blue sky, 130
  Thy towns, like swallows’ nests that cleave on high;
  That glimmer hoar in eve’s last light, descry’d
  Dim from the twilight water’s shaggy side,
  Whence lutes and voices down th’ enchanted woods
  Steal, and compose the oar-forgotten floods, 135
  While Evening’s solemn bird melodious weeps,
  Heard, by star-spotted bays, beneath the steeps;
 —­Thy lake, mid smoking woods, that blue and grey
  Gleams, streak’d or dappled, hid from morning’s ray
  Slow-travelling down the western hills, to fold 140
  It’s green-ting’d margin in a blaze of gold;
  From thickly-glittering spires the matin-bell
  Calling the woodman from his desert cell,
  A summons to the sound of oars, that pass,
  Spotting the steaming deeps, to early mass; 145
  Slow swells the service o’er the water born,
  While fill each pause the ringing woods of morn.

  Farewel! those forms that, in thy noon-tide shade,
  Rest, near their little plots of wheaten glade;
  Those stedfast eyes, that beating breasts inspire 150
  To throw the “sultry ray” of young Desire;
  Those lips, whose tides of fragrance come, and go,
  Accordant to the cheek’s unquiet glow;
  Those shadowy breasts in love’s soft light array’d,
  And rising, by the moon of passion sway’d. 155

 —­Thy fragrant gales and lute-resounding streams,
  Breathe o’er the failing soul voluptuous dreams;
  While Slavery, forcing the sunk mind to dwell
  On joys that might disgrace the captive’s cell,
  Her shameless timbrel shakes along thy marge, 160
  And winds between thine isles the vocal barge.

  Yet, arts are thine that rock th’ unsleeping heart,
  And smiles to Solitude and Want impart. 
  I lov’d, mid thy most desert woods astray,
  With pensive step to measure my slow way, [H] 165
  By lonely, silent cottage-doors to roam,
  The far-off peasant’s day-deserted home;
  Once did I pierce to where a cabin stood,
  The red-breast peace had bury’d it in wood,
  There, by the door a hoary-headed sire 170
  Touch’d with his wither’d hand an aged lyre;
  Beneath an old-grey oak as violets lie,
  Stretch’d at his feet with stedfast, upward eye,
  His children’s children join’d the holy sound,
  A hermit—­with his family around. 175