LINES
FROM “INDEPENDENCE.”
Nature I’ll court in her sequestered haunts,
By mountain, meadow, streamlet, grove, or cell,
Where the pois’d lark his evening ditty chants,
And Health, and Peace, and Contemplation dwell.
Where Study shall with Solitude recline;
And Friendship pledge me with his fellow-swains;
And Toil and Temperance sedately twine
The slender cord that fluttering life sustains,