When maidens, innocently young,
Say aften what they never mean,
Ne'er mind their pretty lying tongue,
But tent the language of their een:
If these agree, and she persist
To answer all your love with hate,
Seek elsewhere to be better blest,
And let her sigh when'tis too late.
Roger. Kind Patie, now fair fa' your honest heart!
Ye're ay sae cadgy, and have sie an art
To hearten ane; for now, as clean's a leek,
Ye've cherished me since ye began to speak.
Sae, for your pains, I'll mak ye a propine
(My mother, rest her saul! she made it fine)—
A tartan plaid, spun of good hawslock woo,
Scarlet and green the sets, the borders blue,
With spraings like gowd and siller crossed with black;
I never had it yet upon my back:
Weel are ye wordy o' 't, what have sae kind
Sed up my reveled doubts and cleared my mind.
AMBROSE PHILIPS
TO MISS CHARLOTTE PULTENEY, IN HER MOTHER'S ARMS
Timely blossom, infant fair,
Pondling of a happy pair,
Every morn and every night
Their solicitous delight;
Sleeping, waking, still at ease,
Pleasing, without skill to please;
Little gossip, blithe and hale,
Tattling many a broken tale,
Singing many a tuneless song,
Lavish of a heedless tongue.
Simple maiden, void of art,
Babbling out the very heart,
Yet abandoned to thy will,
Yet imagining no ill,
Yet too innocent to blush;
Like the linnet in the bush,
To the mother-linnet's note
Moduling her slender throat,
Chirping forth thy pretty joys;
Wanton in the change of toys,
Like the linnet green, in May,
Flitting to each bloomy spray;
Wearied then, and glad of rest,
Like the linnet in the nest.
This thy present happy lot,
This, in time, will be forgot;
Other pleasures, other cares,
Ever-busy Time prepares;
And thou shalt in thy daughter see
This picture once resembled thee.
JOHN DYER
GRONGAR HILL
Silent Nymph, with curious eye!
Who, the purple evening, lie
On the mountain's lonely van,
Beyond the noise of busy man;
Painting fair the form of things,
While the yellow linnet sings;
Or the tuneful nightingale
Charms the forest with her tale;
Come, with all thy various hues,
Come, and aid thy sister Muse;
Now while Phoebus riding high
Gives lustre to the land and sky!
Grongar Hill invites my song,
Draw the landscape bright and strong;
Grongar, in whose mossy cells
Sweetly musing Quiet dwells;
Grongar, in whose silent shade,
For the modest Muses made,
So oft I have, the evening still,
At the fountain of a rill,
Sate upon a flowery bed,
With my hand beneath my head;
While strayed my eyes o'er Towy's flood.
Over mead, and over wood,
From house to house, from hill to hill,
'Till Contemplation had her fill.
About his chequered sides I wind,
And leave his brooks and meads behind,
And groves, and grottoes where I lay,
And vistas shooting beams of day:
Wide and wider spreads the vale,
As circles on a smooth canal:
The mountains round—unhappy fate!
Sooner or later, of all height,
Withdraw their summits from the skies,
And lessen as the others rise:
Still the prospect wider spreads,
Adds a thousand woods and meads;
Still it widens, widens still,
And sinks the newly-risen hill.