University of Virginia Library

Taste with as many hues doth hearts engage
As leaves & flowers do upon natures page
Not mind alone the instinctive mood declares
But birds & flowers & insects are its heirs
Taste is their joyous heritage & they
All choose for joy in a peculiar way
Birds own it in the various spots they chuse
Some live content in low grass gemmed with dews
The yellowhammer like a tasteful guest
Neath picturesque green molehills makes a nest
Where oft the shepherd with unlearned ken
Finds strange eggs scribbled as with ink & pen
He looks with wonder on the learned marks
& calls them in his memory writing larks
Birds bolder winged on bushes love to be
While some choose cradles on the highest tree
There rocked by winds they feel no moods of fear
But joy their birthright lives for ever near
& the bold eagle which mans fear enshrouds
Would could he lodge it house upon the clouds
While little wrens mistrusting none that come
In each low hovel meet a sheltered home
Flowers in the wisdom of creative choice
Seem blest with feeling & a silent voice
Some on the barren roads delight to bloom
& others haunt the melancholly tomb
Where death the blight of all finds summers hours
Too kind to miss him with her host of flowers
Some flourish in the sun & some the shade
Who almost in his morning smiles would fade
These in leaf darkened woods right timid stray
& in its green night smile their lives away
Others in water live & scarcely seem
To peep their little flowers above the stream
While water lilies in their glories come
& spread green isles of beauty round their home
All share the summers glory & its good
& taste of joy in each peculiar mood
Insects of varied taste in rapture share
The heyday luxuries which she comes to heir
In wild disorder various routs they run
In water earth still shade & busy sun
& in the crowd of green earths busy claims
They een grow nameless mid their many names
& man that noble insect restless man
Whose thoughts scale heaven in its mighty span
Pours forth his living soul in many a shade
& taste runs riot in her every grade
While the low herd mere savages subdued
With nought of feeling or of taste imbued
Pass over sweetest scenes a carless eye
As blank as midnight in its deepest dye
From these & different far in rich degrees
Minds spring as various as the leaves of trees
To follow taste & all her sweets explore
& Edens make where deserts spread before
In poesys spells some all their raptures find
& revel in the melodies of mind
There nature oer the soul her beauty flings
In all the sweets & essences of things
A face of beauty in a city crowd
Met—passed—& vanished like a summer cloud
In poesys vision more refined & fair
Taste reads oerjoyed & greets her image there
Dashes of sunshine & a page of may
Live there a whole life long one summers day
A blossom in its witchery of bloom
There gathered dwells in beauty & perfume
The singing bird the brook that laughs along
There ceasless sing & never thirsts for song
A pleasing image to its page conferred
In living character & breathing word
Becomes a landscape heard & felt & seen
Sunshine & shade one harmonizing green
Where meads & brooks & forrests basking lie
Lasting as truth & the eternal sky
Thus truth to nature as the true sublime
Stands a mount atlas overpeering time

Styles may with fashions vary—tawdry chaste
Have had their votaries which each fancied taste
From Donns old homely gold whose broken feet
Jostles the readers patience from its seat
To Popes smooth ryhmes that regularly play
In musics stated periods all the way
That starts & closes starts again & times
Its tuning gammut true as minster chimes
From these old fashions stranger metres flow
Half prose half verse that stagger as they go
One line starts smooth & then for room perplext
Elbows along & knocks against the next
& half its neighbour where a pause marks time
There the clause ends what follows is for ryhme
Yet truth to nature will in all remain
As grass in winter glorifies the plain
& over fashions foils rise proud & high
As lights bright fountain in a cloudy sky

The man of sience in discoverys moods
Roams oer the furze clad heath leaf buried woods
& by the simple brook in rapture finds
Treasures that wake the laugh of vulgar hinds
Who see no further in his dark employs
Then village childern seeking after toys
Their clownish hearts & ever heedless eyes
Find nought in nature they as wealth can prize
With them self interest & the thoughts of gain
Are natures beautys all beside are vain
But he the man of science & of taste
Sees wealth far richer in the worthless waste
Where bits of lichen & a sprig of moss
Will all the raptures of his mind engross
& bright winged insects on the flowers of may
Shine pearls too wealthy to be cast away
His joys run riot mid each juicy blade
Of grass where insects revel in the shade
& minds of different moods will oft condemn
His taste as cruel such the deeds to them
While he unconsious gibbets butterflyes
& strangles beetles all to make us wise
Tastes rainbow visions own unnumbered hues
& every shade its sense of taste pursues
The heedless mind may laugh the clown may stare
They own no soul to look for pleasure there
Their grosser feelings in a coarser dress
Mock at the wisdom which they cant possess

Some in recordless rapture love to breath
Natures wild Eden wood & field & heath
In common blades of grass his thoughts will raise
A world of beauty to admire & praise
Untill his heart oerflows with swarms of thought
To that great being who raised life from nought
The common weed adds graces to his mind
& gleams in beautys few beside may find
Associations sweet each object breeds
& fine ideas upon fancy feeds
He loves not flowers because they shed perfumes
Or butterflyes alone for painted plumes
Or birds for singing although sweet it be
But he doth love the wild & meadow lea
There hath the flower its dwelling place & there
The butterflye goes dancing through the air
He loves each desolate neglected spot
That seems in labours hurry left forgot
The warped & punished trunk of stunted oak
Freed from its bonds but by the thunder stroke
As crampt by straggling ribs of ivy sere
There the glad bird makes home for half the year
But take these several beings from their homes
Each beautious thing a withered thought becomes
Association fades & like a dream
They are but shadows of the things they seem
Torn from their homes & happiness they stand
The poor dull captives of a foreign land
Some spruce & delicate ideas feed
With them disorder is an ugly weed
& wood & heath a wilderness of thorns
Which gardeners shears nor fashions nor adorns
No spots give pleasure so forlorn & bare
But gravel walks would work rich wonders there
With such wild natures beautys run to waste
& arts strong impulse mars the truth of taste
Such are the various moods that taste displays
Surrounding wisdom in concentring rays
Where threads of light from one bright focus run
As days proud halo circles round the sun