Poem by John Dyer

The Country Walk

UP Grongar Hill I labor now,
And reach at last his bushy brow.
O, how fresh, how pure the air!
Let me breathe a little here;
Where am I, Nature? I descry
Thy magazine before me lie!
Temples and towns and towers and woods,
And hills and vales and fields and floods,
Crowding before me, edged around
With naked wilds and barren ground.
  See, below, the pleasant dome,
The poet’s pride, the poet’s home,
Which the sunbeams shine upon
To the even from the dawn.
See her woods, where Echo talks,
Her gardens trim, her terrace-walks,
Her wildernesses, fragrant brakes,
Her gloomy bowers and shining lakes.
Keep, ye gods, this humble seat
Forever pleasant, private, neat.
  See yonder hill, uprising steep
Above the river slow and deep;
It looks from hence a pyramid
Beneath a verdant forest hid,
On whose high top there rises great
The mighty remnant of a seat,—
An old green tower, whoso battered brow
Frowns upon the vale below.
  Look upon that flowery plain,
How the sheep surround their swain,
How they crowd to hear his strain!
All careless with his legs across,
Leaning on a bank of moss,
He spends his empty hours at play,
Which fly as light as down away.
  And there behold a bloomy mead,
A silver stream, a willow shade,
Beneath the shade a fisher stand,
Who, with the angle in his hand,
Swings the nibbling fry to land.
  In blushes the descending sun
Kisses the streams, while slow they run;
And yonder hill remoter grows,
Or dusky clouds do interpose.
The fields are left, the laboring hind
His weary oxen does unbind;
And vocal mountains, as they low,
Re-echo to the vales below;
The jocund shepherds piping come,
And drive the herd before them home;
And now begin to light their fires,
Which send up smoke in curling spires:
While with light heart all homeward tend,
To Aberglasney I descend.

1. To Aaron Hill, Esq.
2. An Epistle to a Famous Painter
3. To Aurelia
4. Bedford Level
5. Written at Ocriculum, in Italy, 1725

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