[Page 258]
Father FRANCIS'S Prayer.
Written in Lord WESTMORLAND'S Hermitage.
1 NE gay attire, ne marble hall,
2 Ne arched roof, ne pictur'd wall;
3 Ne cook of Fraunce, ne dainty board,
4 Bestow'd with pypes'of perigord;
5 Ne power, ne such like idle fancies,
6 Sweet Agnes grant to father Francis;
7 Let me ne more myself deceive;
8 Ne more regret the toys I leave;
9 The world I quit, the proud, the vain,
10 Corruption's and Ambition's train;
11 But not the good, perdie nor fair,
12 'Gainst them I make ne vow, ne pray'r;
13 But such aye welcome to my cell,
14 And oft, not always, with me dwell;
15 Then cast, sweet Saint, a circle round,
16 And bless from fools this holy ground;
17 From all the foes to worth and truth,
18 From wanton old, and homely youth;
[Page 259]19 The gravely dull, and pertly gay,
20 Oh banish these; and by my fay,
21 Right well I ween that in this age,
22 Mine house shall prove an hermitage.
An Inscription on the Cell.
1 Beneath these moss-grown roots, this rustick cell,
2 Truth, Liberty, Content, sequester'd dwell;
3 Say you, who dare our hermitage disdain,
4 What drawing-room can boast so fair a train?
An Inscription in the Cell.
1 Sweet bird that sing'st on yonder spray,
2 Pursue unharm'd thy sylvan lay;
3 While I beneath this breezy shade,
4 In peace repose my careless head;
5 And joining thy enraptur'd song,
6 Instruct the world-enamour'd throng,
7 That the contented harmless breast
8 In solitude itself is blest.
About this text
Author: Gilbert West
Themes:
architecture; buildings; hopelessness; vanity of life
Genres:
Text view / Document view
Contents
- NE gay attire , ne marble hall ,... (prayer)
- An Inscription on the Cell . (inscription)
- An Inscription in the Cell . (inscription)
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. 258-259. 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.