Where'er from time thou court'st relief,
The Muse shall still, with social grief,
Her gentlest promise keep:

E'en humble Harting's cottag'd vale
Shall learn the sad repeated tale,
And bid her shepherds weep.

"Ye. Persian dames he said, to

Well may they please

you belong the morals of my song.

1

IF

ODE TO EVENING.

aught of oaten stop, or pastoral song,

May hope, O pensive Eve, to sooth thine ear,

Like thy own brawling springs,

Thy springs, and dying gales;

O Nymph reserv'd, while now the bright-hair'd sun
Sits in yon western tent, whose cloudy skirts,
With brede ethereal wove,
O'erhang his wavy bed:

Now air is hush'd, save where the weak-ey'd bat With short shrill shriek flits by on leathern wing; Or where the beetle winds

His small but sullen horn,

As oft he rises 'midst the twilight path,
Against the pilgrim borne in heedless hum:
Now teach me, maid compos'd,

To breathe some soften'd strain,

Whose numbers, stealing through thy dark'ning vale,

May not unseemly with its stillness suit;

As, musing slow, I hail

Thy genial lov'd return!

For when thy folding-star arising shows
His paly circlet, at his warning lamp
The fragrant Hours, and Elves

Who slept in buds the day,

And many a Nymph who wreaths her brows with sedge,
And sheds the fresh'ning dew, and, lovelier still,

The pensive Pleasures sweet,
Prepare thy shadowy car.

Then let me rove some wild and heathy scene;
Or find some ruin, 'midst its dreary dells,
Whose walls more awful nod

By thy religious gleams.

Or, if chill blust'ring winds, or driving rain,
Prevent my willing feet, be mine the hut,

That, from the mountain's side,

Views wilds, and swelling floods,