Oh! not in ceiled rooms of state,
Cumber’d with books the while,
Would I the Muse’s influence wait,
Or there expect her smile.
A nook in some lone churchyard green,
Fann’d by the summer breeze—
The living and the dead between,
Would more my fancy please.
Nor unto Fancy’s power alone
Should such a scene appeal;
Its sober and its chasten’d tone
My inmost heart would feel.
The moss’d trunk of a scathed tree
Should be my only seat;
And more than moral tomes to me
That relique should repeat.
There too, in living, leafy pride,
Another tree should grow,
Whose writhed branches far and wide
Their welcome shade should throw.
Those boughs, by whisp’ring breezes stirr’d,
My canopy should be;
And every gentle whisper heard
Should tell a tale to me.
A crystal brook should babble by,
And to its bord’ring flowers
Impart fresh loveliness of dye,
And yet more fragrant powers.
Behind me, half conceal’d from sight,
As shunning public view,
The ivied church-tow’r’s humble height
Should greet Heaven’s vaulted blue.
A few low grassy mounds should tell
Where slept the silent dead;
And there the modest heather-bell
Should bend its graceful head.
A guileless infant too should stray
Where those blue flowers might wave,
And cull, perchance, a posy gay
From off a parent’s grave.
While o’er her head a butterfly,
That type, with beauty crown’d,
Of future immortality,
Should lightly flutter round.
My task is done:—who scorns my taste
May paint me, if he can,
A scene with gentler beauties grac’d
For poet or for man.