In rural scenes, in sylvan shades,
Near purling brooks and silent glades,
Meand’ring streams and flow’ry fields,
Where Nature all her fragrance yields.
There would I wish to spend my days,
And with the songsters of the grove,
Chaunt forth the GREAT CREATOR’s praise,
As o’er the dewy meads I rove.
Or traversing the verdant lawn,
At humid morning’s earliest dawn,
Would contemplate the landscape o’er,
And the great ARCHITECT adore.
Or in a grotto art ne’er made,
While resting underneath its shade,
Would pleas’d behold bright Phœbus rise,
And take his station in the skies.
While aromatic shrubs display
Their sweets beneath his brilliant ray,
And downy warblers soar aloft,
And hail the morn in accents soft;
I too would join the matin song,
While echo bore the strains along,
And distant hills should catch the sound,
And balmy zephyrs waft it round.
The lambkin striking o’er the plain,
The cultur’d fields well stor’d with grain,
The blooming meadows, fresh and gay,
With pleas’d delight I would survey.
Far from the pomp of worldly glare,
Contented in my humble sphere,
I’d envy not the rich and great,
Their glitt’ring gems or rooms of state.
Economy should grace my cot--
Ingratitude--I’d know it not;
But of the little I’d possess,
Would share with virtue in distress.
RELIGION, ever blooming maid,
Through grace divine should be my aid;
Should teach my thoughts to mount on high,
And smooth my journey to the sky.
And when the eve of life drew on,
Nought to becloud my setting sun,
But conscious of a life well spent,
To GOD resign the breath he lent.