| |
| FAREWELL, thou busy world! and may | |
| We never meet again! | |
| Here I can eat and sleep and pray, | |
| And do more good in one short day | |
| Than he who his whole age outwears | 5 |
| Upon the most conspicuous theatres, | |
| Where naught but vanity and vice do reign. | |
| |
| Good God! how sweet are all things here! | |
| How beautiful the fields appear! | |
| How cleanly do we feed and lie! | 10 |
| Lord! what good hours do we keep! | |
| How quietly we sleep! | |
| What peace! what unanimity! | |
| How innocent from the lewd fashion | |
| Is all our business, all our recreation! | 15 |
| |
| O, how happy here ’s our leisure! | |
| O, how innocent our pleasure! | |
| O ye valleys! O ye mountains! | |
| O ye groves and crystal fountains, | |
| How I love at liberty, | 20 |
| By turns, to come and visit ye! | |
| |
| Dear Solitude, the soul’s best friend, | |
| That man acquainted with himself doth make, | |
| And, all his Maker’s wonders to entend, | |
| With thee I here converse at will, | 25 |
| And would be glad to do so still, | |
| For it is thou alone that keep’st the soul awake. | |
| |
| How calm and quiet a delight | |
| Is it, alone | |
| To read and meditate and write, | 30 |
| By none offended and offending none! | |
| To walk, ride, sit, or sleep at one’s own ease; | |
| And, pleasing a man’s self, none other to displease. | |
| |
| O my beloved nymph! fair Dove! | |
| Princess of rivers! how I love | 35 |
| Upon the flowery banks to lie, | |
| And view thy silver stream | |
| When gilded by a summer’s beam! | |
| And in it all thy wanton fry | |
| Playing at liberty; | 40 |
| And, with my angle, upon them | |
| The all of treachery | |
| I ever learned industriously to try. | |
| |
| Such streams Rome’s yellow Tiber cannot show, | |
| The Iberian Tagus or Ligurian Po; | 45 |
| The Maese, the Danube, and the Rhine | |
| Are puddle-water all, compared with thine; | |
| And Loire’s pure streams yet too polluted are | |
| With thine much purer to compare; | |
| The rapid Garonne and the winding Seine | 50 |
| Are both too mean, | |
| Beloved Dove, with thee | |
| To vie priority; | |
| Nay, Thame and Isis when conjoined submit, | |
| And lay their trophies at thy silver feet. | 55 |
| |
| O my beloved rocks! that rise | |
| To awe the earth and brave the skies; | |
| From some aspiring mountain’s crown, | |
| How dearly do I love, | |
| Giddy with pleasure, to look down, | 60 |
| And from the vales to view the noble heights above! | |
| O my beloved caves! from Dog-star’s heat | |
| And all anxieties my safe retreat, | |
| What safety, privacy, what true delight, | |
| In the artificial night | 65 |
| Your gloomy entrails make, | |
| Have I taken, do I take! | |
| How oft, when grief has made me fly, | |
| To hide me from society | |
| Even of my dearest friends, have I | 70 |
| In your recesses’ friendly shade | |
| All my sorrows open laid, | |
| And my most secret woes intrusted to your privacy! | |
| |
| Lord! would men let me alone, | |
| What an over-happy one | 75 |
| Should I think myself to be, | |
| Might I, in this desert place, | |
| Which most men in discourse disgrace, | |
| Live but undisturbed and free! | |
| Here in this despised recess | 80 |
| Would I, maugre winter’s cold | |
| And the summer’s worst excess, | |
| Try to live out to sixty full years old! | |
| And all the while, | |
| Without an envious eye | 85 |
| On any thriving under Fortune’s smile, | |
| Contented live, and then—contented die. | |
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