[Page 335]

ODE to a Young Lady, Somewhat too sollicitous about her Manner of Expression.

By the Same.
1 SURVEY, my fair! that lucid stream
2 Adown the smiling valley stray;
3 Would art attempt, or fancy dream,
4 To regulate its winding way?
[Page 336]
5 So pleas'd I view thy shining hair
6 In loose dishevel'd ringlets flow:
7 Not all thy art, nor all thy care
8 Can there one single grace bestow.
9 Survey again that verdant hill,
10 With native plants enamel'd o'er;
11 Say, can the painter's utmost skill
12 Instruct one flow'r to please us more?
13 As vain it were, with artful dye,
14 To change the bloom thy cheeks disclose;
15 And oh may Laura, ere she try,
16 With fresh vermilion paint the rose.
17 Hark, how the wood-lark's tuneful throat
18 Can every study'd grace excel;
19 Let art constrain the rambling note,
20 And will she, Laura, please so well?
21 Oh ever keep thy native ease,
22 By no pedantic laws confin'd!
23 For Laura's voice is form'd to please,
24 So Laura's words be not unkind.

Text

  • TEI/XML [chunk] (XML - 48K / ZIP - 5.9K) / ECPA schema (RNC - 357K / ZIP - 73K)
  • Plain text [excluding paratexts] (TXT - 929 / ZIP - 738 )

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 - 1.3M)

About this text

Title (in Source Edition): ODE to a Young Lady, Somewhat too sollicitous about her Manner of Expression.
Author: William Shenstone
Themes: sex; relations between the sexes; love
Genres: ode
References: DMI 26733

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. 335-336. 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.

Other works by William Shenstone