Ann Radcliffe Poems

High mid Alverna's awful steeps,
Eternal shades, and silence dwell,
Save, when the gale resounding sweeps,
...

Hail! to the hallow'd hill, the circling lawn.
The breezy upland, and the mountain stream!
The last tall pine that earliest meets the dawn,
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Now Ev'ning fades! her pensive step retires,
And Night leads on the dews, and shadowy hours:
Her awful pomp of planetary fires,
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Pour the rich libation high;
The sparkling cup to Bacchus fill;
His joys shall dance in ev'ry eye,
And chase the forms of future ill!
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When first the vernal morn of life,
Beam'd on my infant eye,
Fond I survey'd the smiling scene,
Nor saw the tempest nigh,
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Now, at Moonlight's fairy hour,
When faintly gleams each dewy steep,
And vale and Mountain, lake and bow'r,
In solitary grandeur sleep;
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Evening veil'd in dewy shades,
Slowly sinks upon the main;
See th' empurpled glory fades,
Beneath her sober, chasten'd reign.
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Darkness! thro thy chilling glooms,
Weakly trembles twilight grey;
Twilight fades-and Morning comes,
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Life's a varied, bright illusion,
Joy and sorrow--light and shade;
Turn from sorrow's dark suffusion,
Catch the pleasures ere they fade.
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Soft silken flow'r! that in the dewy vale
Unfolds thy modest beauties to the morn,
And breath'st thy fragrance on her wand'ring gale,
...