Classic Poem

If friends, you wou'd but now this place accost,
E'er the young spring, that epithet has lost,
And of my Rural joys, participate,
You'd learn to talk at this distracted rate,

Hail solitude, where peace and vertue shroud,
Their unvail'd beautys from the cens'ring croud,
Let me but have their company and I,
Shall never envy this worlds gallantry:
Though to few objects, here we are confin'd,
Yet we have full inlargment of the mind.
From varying modes, which oft our minds inslave
An absolute immunity we have,
For here's no pride, but in the suns bright beams
Nor murmuring, but in the crystal streams.
No avarice, but in the hoording bees,
nor is ambition found but in the trees
No emulations ever interpose,
Except betwixt the tulip and the rose.
No wantoness, but in the frisking lambs,
nor luxury, but when they suck their dams.
No politick contrivances of state,
Only each bird contrives to pleas its mate.
No shepherd here of scornfull nymph complains,
Nor are the nymphs undone by faithless swains,
Narcissus only is that sullen he,
That can dispise his amorous talking she
But all things here, conspire to make us bless'd
To nature's table, we are welcome guests,
And true content is musick to the feast.
'Tis such a pleasing solitude as yet,
Romance ne'er found, where happy lovers met,
Yea, such a kind of solitude it is,
Nor much unlike to that of Paradise
Where all things do their choicest good dispence,
And I too here, am plac'd in innocence,
I shu'd conclude that such it realy were,
But that the tree of knowledge won't grow here,
Though in its culture, I have spent some time
Yet it disdains to grow in our cold clime,
Where it can neither fruit, nor leavs produce,
Good for its owner, or the publick use.
Whilst god and nature, for you constitute,
Luxurious banquets of this dainty frute,
Whose tree most fresh and florishing is found,
Ee'er since 'twas planted in your fertil ground,
Whilst you in wit, grow as its branches high,
Deep as its root too, in Philosophy
Large as its spreading armes, your Reasons grow
Close as its shade, your well knit judgments show,
Fresh as its leavs, your sprouting fancys are,
Your vertues like its fruit, are bright and fair