Elegy XXI. Taking a View of the Country From His Retirement
Thus Damon sung-What though unknown to praise,
Umbrageous coverts hide my Muse and me,
Or mid the rural shepherds flow my days?
Amid the rural shepherds, I am free.
To view sleek vassals crowd a stately hall,
Say, should I grow myself a solemn slave?
To find thy tints, O Titian! grace my wall,
Forego the flowery fields my fortune gave?
Lord of my time, my devious path I bend
Through fringy woodland, or smooth-shaven lawn,
Or pensile grove, or airy cliff ascend,
And hail the scene by Nature's pencil drawn.
Thanks be to Fate-though nor the racy vine,
Nor fattening olive, clothe the fields I rove,
Sequester'd shades and gurgling founts are mine,
And every sylvan grot the Muses love.
Here if my vista point the mouldering pile,
Where hood and cowl Devotion's aspect wore,
I trace the tottering relics with a smile,
To think the mental bondage is no more.
Pleased if the glowing landscape wave with corn,
Or the tall oaks, my country's bulwark, rise;
Pleased if mine eye, o'er thousand valleys borne,
Discern the Cambrian hills support the skies.
And see Plinlimmon! even the youthful sight
Scales the proud hill's ethereal cliffs with pain!
Such, Caer-Caradoc! thy stupendous height,
Whose ample shade obscures th' Iernian main.
Bleak, joyless regions! where, by Science fired,
Some prying sage his lonely step may bend;
There, by the love of novel plants inspired,
Invidious view the clambering goats ascend.
Yet for those mountains, clad with lasting snow,
The freeborn Briton left his greenest mead,
Receding sullen from his mightier foe,
For here he saw fair Liberty recede.
Then if a chief perform'd a patriot's part,
Sustain'd her drooping sons, repell'd her foes,
Above all Persian luxe or Attic art
The rude majestic monument arose.
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poem by William Shenstone
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