HERE summer reigns with one eternal smile,
Succeeding harvests bless the happy soil. 
Fair fertile fields, to whom indulgent Heaven
Has ev’ry charm of ev’ry season given;
No killing cold deforms the beauteous year,
The springing flowers no coming winter fear. 
But as the parent Rose decays and dies,
The infant-buds with brighter colour rise,
And with fresh sweets the mother’s scent supplies,
Near them the Violet grows with odours blest,
And blooms in more than Tyrian purple drest;
The rich Jonquils their golden beams display,
And shine in glories emulating day;
The peaceful groves their verdant leaves retain,
The streams still murmur undefil’d with rain,
And tow’ring greens adorn the fruitful plain. 
The warbling kind uninterrupted sing,
Warm’d with enjoyments of perpetual spring.

HERE, at my window, I at once survey
The crowded city and resounding sea;
In distant views the Asian mountains rise,
And lose their snowy summits in the skies;
Above those mountains proud Olympus towers,
The parliamental seat of heavenly powers. 
New to the sight, my ravish’d eyes admire
Each gilded crescent and each antique spire,
The marble mosques, beneath whose ample domes
Fierce warlike sultans sleep in peaceful tombs;
Those lofty structures, once the Christians boast,
Their names, their beauty, and their honours lost;
Those altars bright with gold and sculpture grac’d,
By barb’rous zeal of savage foes defac’d: 
Sophia alone her ancient name retains,
Tho’ unbelieving vows her shrine profanes;
Where holy saints have died in sacred cells,
Where monarchs pray’d, the frantic Dervise dwells. 
How art thou fall’n, imperial city, low! 
Where are thy hopes of Roman glory now? 
Where are thy palaces by prelates rais’d? 
Where Grecian artists all their skill display’d,
Before the happy sciences decay’d;
So vast, that youthful kings might here reside,
So splendid, to content a patriarch’s pride;
Convents where emperors profess’d of old,
Their labour’d pillars that their triumphs told;
Vain monuments of them that once were great,
Sunk undistinguish’d by one common fate;
One little spot, the tenure small contains,
Of Greek nobility, the poor remains. 
Where other Helens with like powerful charms,
Had once engag’d the warring world in arms;
Those names which royal ancestors can boast,
In mean mechanic arts obscurely lost: 
Those eyes a second Homer might inspire,
Fix’d at the loom destroy their useless fire;
Griev’d at a view which struck upon my mind
The short-liv’d vanity of human kind.