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.