See, Selborne spreads her boldest beauties round The varied valley, and the mountain ground, Wildly majestic ! What is all the pride, Of flats, with loads of ornaments supplied ?-- Unpleasing, tasteless, impotent expense, Compared with Nature's rude magnificenee.

Arise, my stranger, to these wild scenes haste; The unfinish'd farm awaits your forming taste: Plan the pavilion, airy, light, and true; Through the high arch call in the length'ning view; Expand the forest sloping up the hill; Swell to a lake the scant, penurious rill; Extend the vista; raise the castle mound In antique taste, with turrets ivy-crown'd: O'er the gay lawn the flow'ry shrub dispread, Or with the blending garden mix the mead; Bid China's pale, fantastic fence delight; Or with the mimic statue trap the sight.

Oft on some evening, sunny, soft, and still, The Muse shall lead thee to the beech-grown hill, To spend in tea the cool, refreshing hour, Where nods in air the pensile, nest-like bower; Or where the hermit hangs the straw-clad cell, Emerging gently from the leafy dell, By fancy plann'd; as once th' inventive maid Met the hoar sage amid the secret shade: Romantic spot ! from whence in prospect lies Whate'er of landscape charms our feasting eyes'-- The pointed spire, the hall, the pasture plain, The russet fallow, or the golden grain, The breezy lake that sheds a gleaming light, Till all the fading picture fail the sight.

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Etext Prepared by Tokuya Matsumoto