There kept by charms conceal'd from mortal eye,
Like roses that in deserts bloom and die.
Rape of the Lock.
Young says of nature:
In distant wilds by human eye unseen
She rears her flowers and spreads her velvet green;
Pure gurgling rills the lonely desert trace,
And waste their music on the savage race.
And Shenstone has—
And like the desert's lily bloom to fade!
Elegy iv.
Gray was so fond of this pleasing imagery, that he repeats it in his Ode to the Installation; and Mason echoes it in his Ode to Memory.
Milton thus paints the evening sun:
If chance the radiant SUN with FAREWELL SWEET
Extends his evening beam, the fields revive,
The birds their notes renew, &c.
Par. Lost, B. ii. v. 492.
Can there be a doubt that he borrowed this beautiful farewell from an obscure poet, quoted by Poole, in his "English Parnassus," 1657? The date of Milton's great work, I find since, admits the conjecture: the first edition being that of 1669. The homely lines in Poole are these,
To Thetis' watery bowers the sun doth hie,
BIDDING FAREWELL unto the gloomy sky.