ON LEAVING A PLACE OF RESIDENCE. William Lisle Bowles Alexander Huber Editor Bodleian Libraries, University of Oxford
Broad Street Oxford OX1 3BG UK
Eighteenth-Century Poetry Archive
Taylor Institution Library St Giles' Oxford OX1 3NA UK info@eighteenthcenturypoetry.org https://www.eighteenthcenturypoetry.org/
Oxford This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. 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.

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