Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, INVITATION TO PETERHEAD, by JAMES HAY BEATTIE


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

INVITATION TO PETERHEAD, by                     Poet's Biography
First Line: Ye, who for sweets that never cloy
Last Line: Instruction, and the poet pleasure.
Subject(s): Country Life


YE, who for sweets that never cloy
Can quit wild pleasure's toilsome strife;
For rural peace and silent joy,
Can quit the storms of city life;

Whom languor, or whom pain, alarms,
Who seek a mind from trouble freed,
On nature's mild or awful charms
Who gaze in rapture; hither speed.

Here Health her bath's enlivening tide,
And fountain's sparkling nectar pours;
Fields fluctuate in flowery pride,
While cool gales fan the quiet shores.

What, though for us no tainted breeze
Along the vocal thicket rove;
No rivulet glance through whispering trees,
And murmur down a depth of grove!

Th' expanded plain Health joys to tread,
To drink heaven's free, fresh-blowing breath,
Not pent in woods and watery shade
Exhaling pestilence and death.

Nor daisied bank of silver stream,
Nor sounding beach our fates deny,
Nor floating sails, that lightly gleam
Where ocean melts in the blue sky;

Nor moon, in solemn splendor born
Slow o'er the hoar hill's shadowy steep;
Nor the gay beam that fires the morn,
Shooting along the tremulous deep.

Or seek ye greatness? See the tide
Whirl'd in tempestuous eddies rave;
See from the brown rock's foamy side
Burst high in air the thundering wave.

Here Friendship warms, here smiles engage,
Here Converse, Quiet, Learning, Leisure,
Feed mirth, soothe care, afford the sage
Instruction, and the poet pleasure.





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