[Page 72]

ON LEAVING A PLACE OF RESIDENCE.

1 If I could bid thee, pleasant shade, farewell
2 Without a sigh, amidst whose circling bowers
3 My stripling prime was passed, and happiest hours,
4 Dead were I to the sympathies that swell
5 The human breast! These woods, that whispering wave,
6 My father reared and nursed, now to the grave
7 Gone down; he loved their peaceful shades, and said,
8 Perhaps, as here he mused: Live, laurels green;
9 Ye pines that shade the solitary scene,
10 Live blooming and rejoice! When I am dead
11 My son shall guard you, and amid your bowers,
12 Like me, find shelter from life's beating showers.
13 These thoughts, my father, every spot endear;
14 And whilst I think, with self-accusing pain,
15 A stranger shall possess the loved domain,
16 In each low wind I seem thy voice to hear.
17 But these are shadows of the shaping brain
18 That now my heart, alas! can ill sustain:
19 We must forget the world is wide the abode
20 Of peace may still be found, nor hard the road.
21 It boots not, so, to every chance resigned,
22 Where'er the spot, we bear the unaltered mind. [Page 73]
23 Yet, oh! poor cottage, and thou sylvan shade,
24 Remember, ere I left your coverts green,
25 Where in my youth I mused, in childhood played,
26 I gazed, I paused, I dropped a tear unseen,
27 That bitter from the font of memory fell,
28 Thinking on him who reared you; now, farewell!

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Title (in Source Edition): ON LEAVING A PLACE OF RESIDENCE.
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Bowles, William Lisle, 1762-1850. The Poetical Works of William Lisle Bowles, Vol. I. With Memoir, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes by George Gilfillan. Edinburgh: James Nichol, 9 North Bank Street..., 1855, pp. 72-73.  (Page images digitized from a copy held at the University of California Libraries.)

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