The bushes and arbours so green,
The tendrils of spray interwove,
With foliage shelter the scene,

And form a retirement for love.

Here Venus, transported, may rove
From pleasure to pleasure unseen,
Nor wish for the Cyprian grove
Her youthful Adonis to screen.

Oft let me contemplative dwell

On a scene where such beauties appear :I could live in a cot or a cell,

And never think solitude near.

DAMON TO HIS FRIENDS.

THE billows of life are supprest;
Its tumults, its toils disappear;
To relinquish the storms that are past,
I think on the sunshine that's near.

Dame Fortune and I are agreed;
Her frowns I no longer endure ;

For the goddess has kindly decreed,
That Damon no more shall be

Now riches will ope the dim eyes,

poor.

To view the increase of my store; And many my friendship will prize, Who never knew Damon before.

But those I renounce and abjure,
Who carried contempt in their eye;
May poverty still be their dower,

That could look on misfortune awry!

Ye powers that weak mortals govern,
Keep Pride at his bay from my mind ;
O let me not haughtily learn

To despise the few friends that were kind.

For their's was a feeling sincere ;
"Twas free from delusion and art;
I that friendship revere,
And hold it yet dear to my heart!

may

By which was I ever forgot?

It was both my physician and cure, That still found the way to my cot, Altho' I was wretched and poor.

Q

"Twas balm to my canker-toothed care;
The wound of affliction it healed:
In distress it was Pity's soft tear,
And naked cold Poverty's shield.

Attend, ye

kind youth of the plain! Who oft with my sorrows condoled; You cannot be deaf to the strain, Since Damon is master of gold.

I have chose a sweet sylvan retreat, Bedecked with the beauties of Spring; Around, my flocks nibble and bleat, While the musical choristers sing.

I force not the waters to stand
In an artful canal at my door;
But a river, at Nature's command,
Meanders both limpid and pure.

She's the goddess that darkens my bowers
With tendrils of ivy and vine;

She tutors my shrubs and my flowers;
Her taste is the standard of mine.

What a pleasing diversified group

Of trees has she spread o'er my ground! She has taught the grave lyrax to droop, And the birch to shed odours around.

For whom has she perfumed my groves? For whom has she clustered my vine? İf Friendship despise my alcoves, They'll ne'er be recesses of mine.

He who tastes his grape juices by stealth,
Without chosen companions to share,

Is the basest of slaves to his wealth,
And the pitiful minion of care.

O come, and with Damon retire

Amidst the green umbrage embowered! Your mirth and your songs to inspire,

Shall the juice of his vintage be poured.

O come, ye dear friends of his youth!
Of all his good fortune partake!
Nor think 'tis departing from truth,
say 'twas preserved for your sake.

To

2

CONSCIENCE.

-Leave her to Heaven,

And to the thorns that in her bosom lodge,
To prick and sting her.

SHAKESP,

No choiring warblers flutter in the sky ; Phoebus no longer holds his radiant sway; While Nature, with a melancholy eye, Bemoans the loss of his departed ray.

O happy he, whose conscience knows no guile!
He to the sable night can bid farewel;
From cheerless objects close his eyes a while,
Within the silken folds of sleep to dwell.

Elysian dreams shall hover round his bed ;

His soul shall wing, on pleasing fancies borne, To shining vales where flowerets lift their head,

Waked by the breathing zephyrs of the morn,