[Page 61]

TO THE Hon. WILMOT VAUGHAN, Esq; in WALES.

By the Same.
1 YE distant realms that hold my friend
2 Beneath a cold ungenial sky,
3 Where lab'ring groves with weight of vapours bend,
4 Or raving winds o'er barren mountains fly;
5 Restore him quick to London's social clime,
6 Restore him quick to friendship, love and joy;
7 Be swift, ye lazy steeds of Time,
8 Ye moments, all your speed employ.
9 Behold November's glooms arise,
10 Pale suns with fainter glory shine,
11 Dark gathering tempests blacken in the skies,
12 And shiv'ring woods their sickly leaves resign.
13 Is this a time on Cambrian hills to roam,
14 To court disease in Winter's baleful reign,
15 To listen to th' Atlantic foam,
16 While rocks repel the roaring main,
[Page 62]
17 While horror fills the region vast,
18 Rheumatic tortures Eurus brings,
19 Pregnant with agues flies the northern blast,
20 And clouds drop quartans from their flagging wings.
21 Dost thou explore Sabrina's sountful source,
22 Where huge Plinlimmon's hoary height ascends:
23 Then downward mark her vagrant course,
24 Till mix'd with clouds the landscape ends?
25 Dost thou revere the hallow'd soil
26 Where Druids old sepulchred lie;
27 Or up cold Snowden's craggy summits toil,
28 And muse on ancient savage liberty?
29 Ill suit such walks with bleak autumnal air,
30 Say, can November yield the joys of May?
31 When Jove deforms the blasted year,
32 Can Wallia boast a chearful day?
33 The town expects thee. — Hark, around,
34 Thro' every street of gay resort,
35 New chariots rattle with awak'ning sound,
36 And crowd the levees, and besiege the court.
37 The patriot, kindling as his wars ensue,
38 Now fires his soul with liberty and fame,
39 Marshals his threat'ning tropes anew,
40 And gives his hoarded thunders aim.
41 Now seats their absent lords deplore,
42 Neglected villas empty stand,
43 Capacious Gro'venor gathers all its store,
44 And mighty London swallows up the land.
[Page 63]
45 See sportive Vanity her flights begin,
46 See new-blown Folly's plenteous harvest rise,
47 She mimick beauties dye their skin,
48 And harlots roll their venal eyes.
49 Fashions are set, and fops return,
50 And young coquettes in arms appear;
51 Dreaming of conquest, how their bosoms burn,
52 Trick'd in the new fantastry of the year.
53 Fly then away, nor scorn to bear a part
54 In this gay scene of folly amply spread:
55 Follies well us'd refine the heart,
56 And pleasures clear the studious head;
57 By grateful interchange of mirth
58 The toils of study sweeter grow,
59 As varying seasons recommend the earth,
60 Nor does Apollo always bend his bow.

Text

  • TEI/XML [chunk] (XML - 118K / ZIP - 13K) / ECPA schema (RNC - 357K / ZIP - 73K)
  • Plain text [excluding paratexts] (TXT - 2.4K / ZIP - 1.5K)

Facsimile (Source Edition)

(Page images digitized by the Eighteenth-Century Poetry Archive from a copy in the archive's library.)

Images

PDF

All Images (PDF - 2.1M)

About this text

Title (in Source Edition): TO THE Hon. WILMOT VAUGHAN, Esq; in WALES.
Author: Francis Coventry
Themes: Wales; friendship; patriotism; glory of the British nation
Genres:
References: DMI 25709

Text view / Document view

Source edition

Dodsley, Robert, 1703-1764. A Collection of Poems in Six Volumes. By Several Hands. Vol. IV. London: printed by J. Hughs, for R. and J. Dodsley, 1763 [1st ed. 1758], pp. 61-63. 6v.: music; 8⁰. (ESTC T131163; OTA K104099.004) (Page images digitized by the Eighteenth-Century Poetry Archive from a copy in the archive's library.)

Editorial principles

The text has been typographically modernized, but without any silent modernization of spelling, capitalization, or punctuation. The source of the text is given and all editorial interventions have been recorded in textual notes. Based on the electronic text originally produced by the TCP project, this ECPA text has been edited to conform to the recommendations found in Level 5 of the Best Practices for TEI in Libraries version 4.0.0.