The Natural History of Selborne | Page 3

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This Etext created by Tokuya Matsumoto

The Natural History of Selborne
by Gilbert White

INVITATION TO SELBORNE.
See, Selborne spreads her boldest beauties round The varied valley, and the mountain ground, Wildly majestic ! What is all the pride, Of flats, with loads of ornaments supplied ?-- Unpleasing, tasteless, impotent expense, Compared with Nature's rude magnificenee.
Arise, my stranger, to these wild scenes haste; The unfinish'd farm awaits your forming taste: Plan the pavilion, airy, light, and true; Through the high arch call in the length'ning view; Expand the forest sloping up the hill; Swell to a lake the scant, penurious rill; Extend the vista; raise the castle mound In antique taste, with turrets ivy-crown'd: O'er the gay lawn the flow'ry shrub dispread, Or with the blending garden mix the mead; Bid China's pale, fantastic fence delight; Or with the mimic statue trap the sight.
Oft on some evening, sunny, soft, and still, The Muse shall lead thee to the beech-grown hill, To spend in tea the cool, refreshing hour, Where nods in air the pensile, nest-like bower; Or where the hermit hangs the straw-clad cell, Emerging gently from the leafy dell, By fancy plann'd; as once th' inventive maid Met the hoar sage amid the secret shade: Romantic spot ! from whence in prospect lies Whate'er of landscape charms our feasting eyes'-- The pointed spire, the hall, the pasture plain, The russet fallow, or the golden grain, The breezy lake that sheds a gleaming light, Till all the fading picture fail the sight.
Each to his task; all different ways retire: Cull the dry stick; call forth the seeds of fire; Deep fix the kettle's props, a forky row, Or give with fanning hat the breeze to blow.
Whence is this taste, the furnish'd hall forgot, To feast in gardens, or th' unhandy grot ? Or novelty with some new charms surprises, Or from our very shifts some joy arises. Hark, while below the village bells ring round, Echo, sweet nymph, returns the soften'd sound; But if gusts rise, the rushing forests roar, Like the tide tumbling on the pebbly shore.
Adown the vale, in lone, sequester'd nook, Where skirting woods imbrown the dimpling brook, The ruin'd convent lies: here wont to dwell The lazy canon midst his cloister'd cell, While Papal darkness brooded o'er the land, Ere Reformation made her glorious stand: Still oft at eve belated shepherd swains See the cowl'd spectre skim the folded plains.
To the high Temple would my stranger go, The mountain-brow commands the woods below: In Jewry first this order found a name, When madding Croisades set the world in flame; When western climes, urged on by pope and priest Pour'd forth their minions o'er the deluged East: Luxurious knights, ill suited to defy To mortal fight Turcestan chivalry.
Nor be the parsonage by the Muse forgot -- The partial bard admires his native spot; Smit with its beauties, loved, as yet a child, Unconscious why, its capes, grotesque and wild. High on a mound th' exalted gardens stand, Beneath, deep valleys, scoop'd by Nature's hand. A Cobham here, exulting in his art, Might blend the general's with the gardener's part; Might fortify with all the martial trade Of rampart, bastion, fosse, and palisade; Might plant the mortar with wide threat'ning bore, Or bid the mimic cannon seem to roar:
Now climb the steep, drop now your eye belong Where round the blooming village orchards grow; There, like a picture, lies my lowly seat, A rural, shelter'd, unobserved retreat.
Me far above the rest Selbornian scenes, The pendent forests, and the mountain greens, Strike with delight; there spreads the distant view, That gradual fades till sunk in misty blue: Here Nature hangs her slopy woods to sight, Rills purl between and dart a quivering light.

SELBORNE HANGER.
A WINTER PIECE, TO THE MISS B*****S
The bard, who sang so late in blithest strain Selbornian prospects, and the rural reign, Now suits his plaintive pipe to sadden'd tone, While the blank swains the changeful year bemoan.
How fallen the glories of these fading scenes ! The dusky beech resigns his vernal greens; The yellow maple mourns in sickly hue, And russet woodlands crowd the dark'ning view.
Dim, clust'ring fogs involve the country round, The valley and the blended mountain ground Sink in confusion; but with tempest-wing Should Boreas from his