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IMVITATION TO

PETER HEAD.

YE, who for sweets that never cloy

Can quit wild pleasure's toilsome strife;
For rural peace, and silent joy,
Can quit the storms of city life;

Whom languor, or whom pain, alarms,
Who seek a mind from trouble freed,
On nature's mild or awful charms

Who gaze in rapture ; hither speed.

Here Health her bath's enlivening tide,
And fountain's sparkling nectar pours;
Fields fluctuate in flowery pride,

While cool gales fan the quiet shores.

What, though for us no tainted breeze
Along the vocal thicket rove ;*

No rivulet glance through whispering trees,
And murmur down a depth of grove !

* There are no woods in this neighbourhood, and very few trees.

Fatemur: at non talia poscimus ;
Patente campo læta Salubritas

Gaudet, nec humenti sub umbra
Pestiferam ciet alma noctem.

Sed non fluenti florea ripa non
Repens susurrus per cava littora,
Desunt, freti vel glauca, longe
Purpureis decorata velis.

Non luna curru argentea lucido
Per cana collis visa cacumina,

Non flamma matutina Phœbi

Per tremulum radiata pontum.

Sublime quæras; hic tumidum mare, Hic æstuantum verbera fluctuum Cernes, resultantumque in auras Nubila cana abiisse rorum.

Hic risus, hic convivia læta sunt,
Sermo, sodales, otia, literæ,

Quæcunque tristi, vel jocoso,

Philosopho, aut placeant poeta.

Th' expanded plain Health joys to tread,

To drink heaven's free, fresh-blowing breath, Not pent in woods and watery shade Exhaling pestilence and death.

Nor daisied bank of silver stream,
Nor sounding beach our fates deny,
Nor floating sails, that lightly gleam
Where ocean melts in the blue sky;

Nor moon, in solemn splendor born
Slow o'er the hoar hill's shadowy steep;
Nor the gay beam that fires the morn,
Shooting along the tremulous deep.

Or seek ye greatness? See the tide
Whirl'd in tempestuous eddies rave;
See from the brown rock's foamy side
Burst high in air the thundering wave.

Here Friendship warms, here smiles engage,
Here Converse, Quiet, Learning, Leisure,
Feed mirth, sooth care, afford the sage
Instruction, and the poet pleasure.

OD E.*

POWER of these awful regions, hail!
For sure some mighty Genius roves
With step unheard, or loves to sail
Unseen, along these cliffs and groves.

O'er the wild mountain's stormy waste,
The shatter'd crag's impending breast,
And rocks by mortal feet untrod;
Deep in the murmuring night of woods,
Or mid the headlong roar of floods,

More bright we view the present God.

More bright, than if in glittering state
O'ercanopied with gold he sat,

The pride of Phidian art confess'd.

* Supposed to have been written on occasion of visiting the wild and magnificent scenery of the cliffs of Kinnoull, on the banks of the Tay near Perth. The Author has in these lines not unsuccessfully imitated that noble ode of Mr. Gray, which begins thus: 0 Tu, severi Religio loci, &c.

Hail, Power sublime! thy votary shield; O listen to my lay, and yield

A young, but weary, wanderer, rest.

But if, from rest and silence torn,
And these loved scenes, I roam afar,
By fate's returning surge down born,
To toss in care's tumultuous war;

Grant me, secure from toil and strife,
And all the vain alarms of life,

And all the rabble's feverish rage,
Remote in some obscure retreat,

At least to pass, in freedom sweet,

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