Such seraphs are; they may idealized
Be, but no sculptors e'er their forms have wrought In marble; no, nor painters highly prized Ever on canvas have their features caught, Though by such art the poesy of thought Is bodied forth; no poet can reveal (His mind with treasured imagery fraught) Those superhuman beings that the zeal Of Fancy would disclose, but Nature will conceal.
The glories of the fane well harmonize
Simplicity and grandeur; to and fro
Like sunbeams, or quick glances of bright eyes,
Rapid, ideal changes come and go,
Of living pictures an unending show
Here Fancy brightens with unwearied wing;
Tides of celestial music onward flow
For ever! voices sweeter than in spring Philomel's notes, in praise of Beauty ever sing!
"ESSAY ON THE PICTURESQUE.'
"Uvedale Price's Essay on the Picturesque, the most finished composition in the English language."-DR. PARR.
A MASTER mind, that Taste and Genius grace,
The fine designs of Nature's hand can trace ;
Where they may differ, where again we see
The beautiful and picturesque agree.
How light, where stands a tree of beauty plays,
The eye delighting through a thousand sprays:
How Autumn to the landscape gives a glow
Divine, that painters o'er their canvass throw;
Hence Titian's golden hue, and colouring warm,
That has of Autumn all the mellow charm.
How sudden bursts of sunshine in the spring
O'er the green flourishing tree their lustre fling;
The delicate foliage of the leaf conceals
In part the boughs beneath, in part reveals.
How undulate the boughs in wavy pride,
As sweeps the light breeze o'er the river's tide :
How distant openings through the glade invite
Inquiry, source of ever new delight;
Leading the eye as in a wanton chase,
Onwards, with happy art creating space :
Itself the same, through combinations new
Changes from every spot beheld the view,
Advances here a wood, and there recedes
A stream, again, far glittering o'er the meads!
How stretch along the hills, around, above,
Trees singly, or in groups, or lengthen'd grove.
How fan-like branches of the cedar, spread
Magnificently, feather overhead,
In avenues, of which the pillar'd shade
Attracts the devotee, or love-sick maid.
How on its gorgeous canopy of leaves
The widely-branching chestnut light receives.
Now, Uvedale, pour thy storm of satire down
On that great master of improvement, Brown.
Who would variety's fair charms deny,
And with eternal clumps fatigue the eye?
Thickets and glens and every natural grace
To that magician's tasteless art give place.
Romantic walks and coves, projections grand,
Are swept away by his all-levelling hand.
Oaks that around their arms majestic throw,
If rooted in the soil proscribed, must go.
Wild flowers, that o'er the river's margin stray
In intertangling knots, are mown away!
The cheerful stream, that silently beneath
O'erhanging boughs in many a mazy wreath
Stole on, or babbling o'er the shallows ran
Fretting the stones, is widen'd by a plan;
Shrubs are destroy'd, banks levell'd down in haste,
A sheet of water glares, so wills it Taste.
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