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WRITTEN AT AN INN AT HENLEY

To thee, fair Freedom! I retire

From flattery, cards, and dice, and din; Nor art thou found in mansions higher Than the low cot, or humble inn.

'Tis here with boundless power I reign;
And every health which I begin,
Converts dull port to bright champagne;
Such freedom crowns it, at an inn.

I fly from pomp, I fly from plate!

I fly from Falsehood's specious grin; Freedom I love, and form I hate,

And choose my lodgings at an inn.

Here, waiter! take my sordid ore,

Which lacqueys else might hope to win;
It buys, what courts have not in store;
It buys me freedom at an inn.

Whoe'er has travelled life's dull round,
Where'er his stages may have been,
May sigh to think he still has found

The warmest welcome at an inn.

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HOPE

PART II OF A PASTORAL BALLAD

My banks they are furnished with bees,
Whose murmur invites one to sleep;
My grottos are shaded with trees,

And my hills are white over with sheep.
I seldom have met with a loss,

Such health do my fountains bestow;
My fountains all bordered with moss,
Where the hare-bells and violets grow.

Not a pine in my grove is there seen,
But with tendrils of woodbine is bound:
Not a beech's more beautiful green,

But a sweet-brier entwines it around.
Not my fields, in the prime of the year,
More charms than my cattle unfold;
Not a brook that is limpid and clear,
But it glitters with fishes of gold.

One would think she might like to retire
To the bower I have laboured to rear;
Not a shrub that I heard her admire,
But I hasted and planted it there.
O how sudden the jessamine strove
With the lilac to render it gay!

Already it calls for my love,

To prune the wild branches away.

From the plains, from the woodlands and groves,

What strains of wild melody flow! How the nightingales warble their loves

From thickets of roses that blow ! And when her bright form shall appear,

Each bird shall harmoniously join

In concert so soft and so clear,

As she may not be fond to resign.

1 have found out a gift for my fair;

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I have found where the wood-pigeons breed:

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But let me that plunder forbear,

She will say 'twas a barbarous deed.

For he ne'er could be true, she averred,

Who would rob a poor bird of its young:

And I loved her the more when I heard

Such tenderness fall from her tongue.

I have heard her with sweetness unfold
How that pity was due to a dove:
That it ever attended the bold;

And she called it the sister of love.
But her words such a pleasure convey,
So much I her accents adore,

Let her speak, and whatever she say,

Methinks I should love her the more.

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Can a bosom so gentle remain
Unmoved, when her Corydon sighs?
Will a nymph that is fond of the plain,
These plains and this valley despise?
Dear regions of silence and shade!

Soft scenes of contentment and ease?
Where I could have pleasingly strayed,
If aught, in her absence, could please.

But where does my Phillida stray?

And where are her grots and her bowers?
Are the groves and the valleys as gay,

And the shepherds as gentle as ours?
The groves may perhaps be as fair,

And the face of the valleys as fine;
The swains may in manners compare,

But their love is not equal to mine.

EDWARD YOUNG

FROM NIGHT THOUGHTS

NIGHT I

TIRED Nature's sweet restorer, balmy Sleep!

He, like the world, his ready visit pays
Where fortune smiles; the wretched he forsakes;
Swift on his downy pinion flies from woe,
And lights on lids unsullied with a tear.

From short (as usual) and disturbed repose,

I wake: how happy they, who wake no more!
Yet that were vain, if dreams infest the grave.
I wake, emerging from a sea of dreams

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Tumultuous; where my wrecked desponding thought, 10 From wave to wave of fancied misery,

At random drove, her helm of reason lost.

Though now restored, 'tis only change of pain, (A bitter change!) severer for severe.

The day too short for my distress; and night,
Ev'n in the zenith of her dark domain,
Is sunshine to the colour of my fate.

Night, sable goddess! from her ebon throne,
In rayless majesty, now stretches forth
Her leaden sceptre o'er a slumbering world.

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