Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: HAIL Felpham! Hail! in youth my favorite scene! First in my heart of villages marine ! To me tby waves confirm'U my truest wealth. My only parent's renovated health, Whose love maternal, and whose sweet discourse Gave to my feelings all their cordial force : Hence mindful, how her tender spirit blest Thy salutary air, and balmy rest; Thee, as profuse of recollections sweet, Fit for a pensive veteian's calm retreat, I chose, as provident for sure decay, A nest for age in life's declining day ! Reserving Eartham for a darling son, C onfiding in our threads of life unspun : Blind to futurity !—O blindness, given As mercy's boon to man from pitying Heaven! Man could not live, if his prophetic eyes View'd all afflictions, ere they will arise. Think, gentle friend, who saw'st, in chearful hour Thy poet planning a sequestered tower, And gayly rearing, in affection's pride, His little villa by the ocean's side ; Encircled then by friendly artists, three, Full of sweet fancy, and of social glee, Think what sensations must have pierc'd his breast Had a prophetic voice this truth exprest : O'er thy new fabric ere six year's have fled Lonely thou'lt mourn all these clear inmates dead. The unrelenting grave absorb'd them all, And in the shade of this domestic wall, Which, as it rose re-echoed to their voice, And heard them in gay presages rejoice Of future studies, works of special note! That each, to deck these precincts, would devote. Here robl/d of them, their leader, and their friend, Of their kind visions feels the mournful end, Afflicted, and alone!—Yet not alone ! Their hovering spirits make this scene their own, O sweet prerogative of love sublime ! Which so can soften d...