On the Prospect of Planting Arts and Learning in America.
THE Muse, disgusted at an age and clime
Barren of every glorious theme,
In distant lands now waits a better time,
Producing subjects worthy fame;
In happy climes, where from the genial sun
And virgin earth such scenes ensue,
The force of art by nature seems outdone,
And fancied beauties by the true;
In happy climes the seat of innocence,
Where nature guides and virtue rules,
Where men shall not impose, for truth and sense,
The pedantry of courts and schools.
There shall be sung another golden age,
The rise of empire and of arts,
The good and great uprising epic rage,
The wisest heads and noblest hearts.
Not such as Europe breeds in her decay;
Such as she bred when fresh and young,
When heavenly flame did animate her clay,
By future poets shall be sung.
Westward the course of empire takes its way;
The first four acts already past,
The fifth shall close the drama with the day;
Time's noblest offspring is the last.
Sally in our Alley.
Or all the girls that are so smart,
There's none like Pretty Sally;
She is the darling of my heart,
And lives in our alley.
There's ne'er a lady in the land
That's half so sweet as Sally;
She is the darling of my heart,
And lives in our alley.
Her father he makes cabbage-nets,
And through the streets does cry them;
Her mother she sells laces long
To such as please to buy them:
But sure such folk can have no part
In such a girl as Sally;
She is the darling of my heart,
And lives in our alley.
When she is by, I leave my work,
I love her so sincerely;
My master comes, like any Turk,
And bangs me most severely:
But let him bang, long as he will,
I'll bear it all for Sally;
She is the darling of my heart,
And lives in our alley.
Of all the days are in the week,
I dearly love but one day,
And that's the day that comes betwixt
A Saturday and Monday;
For then I'm dressed, all in my best,
To walk abroad with Sally;
She is the darling of my heart,
And lives in our alley.
My master carries me to church,
And often am I blamed,
Because I leave him in the lurch,
Soon as the text is named:
I leave the church in sermon time,
And slink away to Sally;
She is the darling of my heart,
And lives in our alley.
When Christmas comes about again,
O then I shall have money;
I'll hoard it up and, box and all,
I'll give it to my honey;
Oh would it were ten thousand pounds,
I'd give it all to Sally;
For she 's the darling of my heart,
And lives in our alley.
My master, and the neighbors all,
Make game of me and Sally,
And but for her I 'd better be
A slave, and row a galley:
But when my seven long years are out,
O then I'll marry Sally,
And then how happily we 'll live
But not in our alley.
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 dues,
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 stray'd 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 chequer'd 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.
Now, I gain the mountain's brow,
What a landscape lies below!
No clouds, no vapors intervene;
But the gay, the open scene
Does the face of Nature show,
In all the hues of Heaven's bow!
And, swelling to embrace the light,
Spreads around beneath the sight.
Old castles on the cliffs arise,
Proudly towering in the skies!
Rushing from the woods, the spires.
Seem from hence ascending fires!
Half his beams Apollo sheds
On the yellow mountain-heads!
Gilds the fleeces of the flocks,
And glitters on the broken rocks!
Below me trees unnumber'd rise,
Beautiful in various dyes:
The gloomy pine, the poplar blue,
The yellow beach, the sable yew,
The slender fir that taper grows,
The sturdy oak with broad-spread boughs,
And beyond the purple grove,
Haunt of Phyllis, queen of love!
Gaudy as the opening dawn,
Lies a long and level lawn,
On which a dark hill, steep and high,
Holds and charms the wandering eye!
Deep are his feet in Towy's flood,
His sides are cloth'd with waving wood,
And ancient towers crown his brow,
That cast an awful look below;
Whose ragged walls the ivy creeps,
And with her arms from falling keeps;
So both a safety from the wind
In mutual dependence find.
'T is now the raven's bleak abode:
"T is now the apartment of the toad;
And there the fox securely feeds;
And there the poisonous adder breeds,
Conceal'd in ruins, moss, and weeds;
While, ever and anon, there falls
Huge heaps of hoary moulder'd walls.
Yet Time has seen, that lifts the low,
And level lays the lofty brow,
Has seen this broken pile complete,
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