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, 195 With spraings like gowd and siller crossed with black; 200 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 205 Roger. As ye advise, I'll promise to observe 't. But ye maun keep the flute; ye best deserve 't: For I'm in tift to hear you play and sing. 210 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 215 1721. MATTHEW GREEN FROM THE SPLEEN Forced by soft violence of pray'r, And thus she models my desire. Two hundred pounds half-yearly paid, A farm some twenty miles from town, And drive while t' other holds the plough; May Heav'n (it's all I wish for) send Where cows may cool and geese may swim; 5 ΙΟ 1155 20 25 Soft to the eye and to the feet, 30 Fit dwelling for the feathered throng, Who pay their quit-rents with a song; With op'ning views of hill and dale, 35 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, 40 From hills through plains in dusk array Here stillness, height, and solemn shade Here nymphs from hollow oaks relate 45 The dark decrees and will of Fate, And dreams beneath the spreading beech Now while Phoebus riding high Sate upon a flow'ry bed With my hand beneath my head, While strayed my eyes o'er Towy's flood, From house to house, from hill to hill, Above his chequered sides I wind And leave his brooks and meads behind, The mountains round, unhappy fate, Withdraw their summits from the skies Still the prospect wider spreads, Adds a thousand woods and meads; Still it widens, widens still, And sinks the newly-risen hill. 40 |