The Boarding School; Lessons of a Preceptress to Her Pupils / Consisting of Information, Instruction and Advice, Calculated to Improve the Manners and Form the Character of Young Ladies. To Which Is Added, a Collection of Letters, Written by the Pupils to Their Instructress, Their Friends, and Each Other.

by Hannah Webster Foster

Demand the contemplative gaze:

Unnumber’d beauties please the sight,

And give the mental eye delight.

O dawn! thy sombre shades I love!

With thee in solitude I’ll rove:

While health expansive gives the mind

To taste thy pleasures unconfin’d.

Here free from fashion’s artful forms,

Benevolence the bosom warms:

Persuasive virtue charms the soul,