I thank thee well. 
How fair the verdure all around! 
How green!

Woman.

My husband soon
Will home return
From labour.  Tarry, tarry, man,
And with us eat our evening meal.

Wanderer.

Is’t here ye dwell?

Woman.

Yonder, within those walls we live. 
My father ’twas who built the cottage
Of tiles and stones from out the ruins. 
’Tis here we dwell. 
He gave me to a husbandman,
And in our arms expired.—­
Hast thou been sleeping, dearest heart
How lively, and how full of play! 
Sweet rogue!

Wanderer.

Nature, thou ever budding one,
Thou formest each for life’s enjoyments,
And, like a mother, all thy children dear,
Blessest with that sweet heritage,—­a home
The swallow builds the cornice round,
Unconscious of the beauties
She plasters up. 
The caterpillar spins around the bough,
To make her brood a winter house;
And thou dost patch, between antiquity’s
Most glorious relics,
For thy mean use,
Oh man, a humble cot,—­
Enjoyest e’en mid tombs!—­
Farewell, thou happy woman!

Woman.

Thou wilt not stay, then?

Wanderer.

May God preserve thee,
And bless thy boy!

Woman.

A happy journey!

Wanderer.

Whither conducts the path
Across yon hill?

Woman.

To Cuma.

Wanderer.

How far from hence?

Woman.

’Tis full three miles.

Wanderer.

Farewell! 
Oh Nature, guide me on my way! 
The wandering stranger guide,
Who o’er the tombs
Of holy bygone times
Is passing,
To a kind sheltering place,
From North winds safe,
And where a poplar grove
Shuts out the noontide ray! 
And when I come
Home to my cot
At evening,
Illumined by the setting sun,
Let me embrace a wife like this,
Her infant in her arms!

1772. * Compare with the beautiful description contained in the subsequent lines, an account of a ruined temple of Ceres, given by Chamberlayne in his Pharonnida (published in 1659)

“....  With mournful majesiy
A heap of solitary ruins lie,
Half sepulchred in dust, the bankrupt heir
To prodigal antiquity....”
-----
Love as A landscape painter.

On a rocky peak once sat I early,
Gazing on the mist with eyes unmoving;
Stretch’d out like a pall of greyish texture,
All things round, and all above it cover’d.

Suddenly a boy appear’d beside me,
Saying “Friend, what meanest thou by gazing
On the vacant pall with such composure? 
Hast thou lost for evermore all pleasure
Both in painting cunningly, and forming?”
On the child I gazed, and thought in secret: 
“Would the boy pretend to be a master?”