Throned in the Sun's descending car What Power unseen diffuses far This tenderness of mind? What genius smiles on yonder flood? What God in whispers from the wood Bids every thought be kind? O ever pleasing Solitude, Companion of the wise and good, Thy shades, thy silence, now be mine, Thy charms my only theme; My haunt the hollow cliff whose Pine Waves o'er the gloomy stream; Whence the sacred Owl on pinions grey Breaks from the rustling boughs, And down the lone vail sails away To more profound repose! [Poet's Note: Not a word of this poem is original; it is simply a fine stanza from of Akenside, connected with a still finer from Beattie, by a couplet from Thomson. This practice, in which the author sometimes indulges, of linking together in his own mind, favourite passages from different authors, seems uobjectionable.] |