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| IN such a night, when every louder wind | |
| Is to its distant cavern safe confin’d; | |
| And only gentle Zephyr fans his wings, | |
| And lonely Philomel, still waking, sings; | |
| Or from some tree, fam’d for the owl’s delight, | 5 |
| She, hollowing clear, directs the wand’rers right: | |
| In such a night, when passing clouds give place, | |
| Or thinly vail the Heav’ns mysterious face; | |
| When in some river, overhung with green, | |
| The waving moon and trembling leaves are seen; | 10 |
| When freshen’d grass now bears itself upright, | |
| And makes cool banks to pleasing rest invite, | |
| Whence springs the woodbind, and the bramble-rose, | |
| And where the sleepy cowslip shelter’d grows; | |
| Whilst now a paler hue the foxglove takes, | 15 |
| Yet checquers still with red the dusky brakes: | |
| When scatter’d glow-worms, but in twilight fine, | |
| Shew trivial beauties watch their hour to shine; | |
| Whilst Salisb ’ry stands the test of every light, | |
| In perfect charms and perfect virtue bright: | 20 |
| When odours, which declin’d repelling day, | |
| Thro’ temperate air uninterrupted stray; | |
| When darken’d groves their softest shadows wear | |
| And falling waters we distinctly hear; | |
| When thro’ the gloom more venerable shows | 25 |
| Some ancient fabrick, awful in repose, | |
| While sunburnt hills their swarthy looks conceal, | |
| And swelling haycocks thicken up the vale: | |
| When the loos’d horse now, as his pasture leads, | |
| Comes slowly grazing thro’ th’ adjoining meads, | 30 |
| Whose stealing pace, and lengthen’d shade we fear, | |
| Till torn-up forage in his teeth we hear: | |
| When nibbling sheep at large pursue their food, | |
| And unmolested kine rechew the cud; | |
| When curlews cry beneath the village walls, | 35 |
| And to her straggling brood the partridge calls; | |
| Their short-liv’d jubilee the creatures keep, | |
| Which but endures, whilst tyrant-man do’s sleep: | |
| When a sedate consent the spirit feels, | |
| And no fierce light disturbs, whilst it reveals; | 40 |
| But silent musings urge the mind to seek | |
| Something, too high for syllables to speak; | |
| Till the free soul to a compos’dness charm’d, | |
| Finding the elements of rage disarm’d, | |
| O’er all below a solemn quiet grown, | 45 |
| Joys in th’ inferior world, and thinks it like her own: | |
| In such a night let me abroad remain, | |
| Till morning breaks, and all ’s confus’d again; | |
| Our cares, our toils, our clamours are renew’d, | |
| Or pleasures, seldom reach’d, again pursu’d. | 50 |
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