The Natural History of Selborne

From the opening

See, Selborne spreads her boldest beauties round The varied valley, and the mountain ground, Wildly majestic ! What is all the pride, Of flats, with loads of ornaments supplied ?— Unpleasing, tasteless, impotent expense, Compared with Nature’s rude magnificenee.

Arise, my stranger, to these wild scenes haste; The unfinish’d farm awaits your forming taste: Plan the pavilion, airy, light, and true; Through the high arch call in the length’ning view; Expand the forest sloping up the hill; Swell to a lake the scant, penurious rill; Extend the vista; raise the castle mound In antique taste, with turrets ivy-crown’d: O’er the gay lawn the flow’ry shrub dispread, Or with the blending garden mix the mead; Bid China’s pale, fantastic fence delight; Or with the mimic statue trap the sight.

Oft on some evening, sunny, soft, and still, The Muse shall lead thee to the beech-grown hill, To spend in tea the cool, refreshing hour, Where nods in air the pensile, nest-like bower; Or where the hermit hangs the straw-clad cell, Emerging gently from the leafy dell, By fancy plann’d; as once th’ inventive maid Met the hoar sage amid the secret shade: Romantic spot ! from whence in prospect lies Whate’er of landscape charms our feasting eyes’— The pointed spire, the hall, the pasture plain, The russet fallow, or the golden grain, The breezy lake that sheds a gleaming light, Till all the fading picture fail the sight.

Each to his task; all different ways retire: Cull the dry stick; call forth the seeds of fire; Deep fix the kettle’s props, a forky row, Or give with fanning hat the breeze to blow.

Whence is this taste, the furnish’d hall forgot, To feast in gardens, or th’ unhandy grot ? Or novelty with some new charms surprises, Or from our very shifts some joy arises. Hark, while below the village bells ring round, Echo, sweet nymph, returns the soften’d sound; But if gusts rise, the rushing forests roar, Like the tide tumbling on the pebbly shore.

A short sample. Read the whole book

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