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Roger. Kind Patie, now fair fa' your honest heart!

Ye're ay sae cadgy, and have sic an art

To hearten ane; for now, as clean's a leek,
Ye've cherished me since ye began to speak.
Sae, for your pains, I'll mak ye a propine
(My mother, rest her saul! she made it fine)—
A tartan plaid, spun of good hawslock woo,
Scarlet and green the sets, the borders blue,

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With spraings like gowd and siller crossed with black;
I never had it yet upon my back:

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Weel are ye wordy o't, wha have sae kind

Red up my reveled doubts and cleared my mind.

Patie. Weel, ha'd ye there. And since ye've frankly

made

To me a present of your braw new plaid,

My flute's be yours; and she too that's sae nice
Shall come a-will, gif ye'll tak my advice.

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Roger. As ye advise, I'll promise to observe 't.

But ye maun keep the flute; ye best deserve 't:
Now tak it out and gie's a bonny spring,

For I'm in tift to hear you play and sing.

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Patie. But first we'll take a turn up to the height,

And see gif all our flocks be feeding right.

Be that time bannocks and a shave of cheese
Will make a breakfast that a laird might please;
Might please the daintiest gabs, were they sae wise
To season meat with health instead of spice.
When we have tane the grace-drink at this well,
I'll whistle syne, and sing t' ye like mysell.

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1721.

MATTHEW GREEN

FROM

THE SPLEEN

Forced by soft violence of pray'r,
The blithesome goddess soothes my care;
I feel the deity inspire,

And thus she models my desire.

Two hundred pounds half-yearly paid,
Annuity securely made;

A farm some twenty miles from town,
Small, tight, salubrious, and my own;
Two maids, that never saw the town;
A serving-man not quite a clown;
A boy to help to tread the mow,

And drive while t' other holds the plough;
A chief, of temper formed to please,
Fit to converse and keep the keys,
And, better to preserve the peace,
Commissioned by the name of niece;
With understandings of a size
To think their master very wise.

May Heav'n (it's all I wish for) send
One genial room to treat a friend,
Where decent cupboard, little plate,
Display benevolence, not state.
And may my humble dwelling stand
Upon some chosen spot of land.
A pond before, full to the brim,

Where cows may cool and geese may swim;
Behind, a green like velvet neat,

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Soft to the eye and to the feet,
Where od❜rous plants in evening fair
'Breathe all around ambrosial air;
From Eurus, foe to kitchen ground,
Fenced by a slope with bushes crowned,

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Fit dwelling for the feathered throng,

Who pay their quit-rents with a song;

With op'ning views of hill and dale,

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Which sense and fancy too regale,

Where the half-cirque, which vision bounds,

Like amphitheatre surrounds,

And woods impervious to the breeze

Thick phalanx of embodied trees,

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From hills through plains in dusk array
Extended far-repel the day.

Here stillness, height, and solemn shade
Invite, and contemplation aid;

Here nymphs from hollow oaks relate

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The dark decrees and will of Fate,

And dreams beneath the spreading beech
Inspire, and docile Fancy teach,

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Who wealth, hard earned by guilty cares,
Bequeath untouched to thankless heirs.

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Now while Phoebus riding high
Gives lustre to the land and sky!
Grongar Hill invites my song,—
Draw the landskip bright and strong;
Grongar, in whose mossy cells
Sweetly musing Quiet dwells;
Grongar, in whose silent shade,
For the modest Muses made,
So oft I have, the evening still,
At the fountain of a rill,

Sate upon a flow'ry bed

With my hand beneath my head,

While strayed my eyes o'er Towy's flood,
Over mead and over wood,

From house to house, from hill to hill,
Till Contemplation had her fill.

Above his chequered sides I wind

And leave his brooks and meads behind,
And groves and grottoes where I lay,
And vistoes shooting beams of day.
Wide and wider spreads the vale,
As circles on a smooth canal;

The mountains round, unhappy fate,
Sooner or later, of all height,

Withdraw their summits from the skies
And lessen as the others rise:

Still the prospect wider spreads,

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Adds a thousand woods and meads;

Still it widens, widens still,

And sinks the newly-risen hill.

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