SONNET XXX.

ON

REVIEWING THE FOREGOING.

SEPT. 21st, 1797.

I Turn these leaves with thronging thoughts, and say,

"Alas! how many friends of youth are dead, "How many visions of fair hope have fled, "Since first, my Muse, me met:"-So speeds away Life, and its shadows; yet we sit and sing, Stretch'd in the noontide bow'r, as if the day Declin'd not, and we yet might trill our lay Beneath the pleasant morning's purple wing That fans us, while aloft the gay clouds shine! Oh, ere the coming of the long cold night, RELIGION, may we bless thy purer light, That still shall warm us, when the tints decline O'er earth's dim hemisphere, and sad we gaze On the vain visions of our passing days!

Elegy,

WRITTEN AT THE

HOTWELLS, BRISTOL.

INSCRIBED TO

THE REV. W. HOWLEY,

FELLOW OF WINCHESTER COLLEGE.

"Ibi hæc incondita secum "Montibus et silvis studio jactabit inani."

VIRG.

Elegy,

WRITTEN AT THE

HOTWELLS, BRISTOL, JULY 1789.

THE morning wakes in shadowy mantle grey,

The darksome woods their glimmering skirts unfold, Prone from the cliff the falcon wheels her way,

And long and loud the bell's slow chime is toll'd.

The redd'ning light gains fast upon the skies,
And far away the glist'ning vapours sail,

Down the rough steep th' accustom'd hedger hies,
And the stream winds in brightness thro' the vale!

How beauteous the pale rocks above the shore
Uplift their bleak and furrow'd aspect high;
How proudly desolate their foreheads hoar,

That meet the earliest sunbeam of the sky!