Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, ed. Poems of Places: An Anthology in 31 Volumes.
England: Vols. I–IV. 1876–79.
The Retirement
By Charles Cotton (1630–1687)F
We never meet again!
Here I can eat and sleep and pray,
And do more good in one short day
Than he who his whole age outwears
Upon the most conspicuous theatres,
Where naught but vanity and vice do reign.
How beautiful the fields appear!
How cleanly do we feed and lie!
Lord! what good hours do we keep!
How quietly we sleep!
What peace! what unanimity!
How innocent from the lewd fashion
Is all our business, all our recreation!
O, how innocent our pleasure!
O ye valleys! O ye mountains!
O ye groves and crystal fountains,
How I love at liberty,
By turns, to come and visit ye!
That man acquainted with himself doth make,
And, all his Maker’s wonders to entend,
With thee I here converse at will,
And would be glad to do so still,
For it is thou alone that keep’st the soul awake.
Is it, alone
To read and meditate and write,
By none offended and offending none!
To walk, ride, sit, or sleep at one’s own ease;
And, pleasing a man’s self, none other to displease.
Princess of rivers! how I love
Upon the flowery banks to lie,
And view thy silver stream
When gilded by a summer’s beam!
And in it all thy wanton fry
Playing at liberty;
And, with my angle, upon them
The all of treachery
I ever learned industriously to try.
The Iberian Tagus or Ligurian Po;
The Maese, the Danube, and the Rhine
Are puddle-water all, compared with thine;
And Loire’s pure streams yet too polluted are
With thine much purer to compare;
The rapid Garonne and the winding Seine
Are both too mean,
Beloved Dove, with thee
To vie priority;
Nay, Thame and Isis when conjoined submit,
And lay their trophies at thy silver feet.
To awe the earth and brave the skies;
From some aspiring mountain’s crown,
How dearly do I love,
Giddy with pleasure, to look down,
And from the vales to view the noble heights above!
O my beloved caves! from Dog-star’s heat
And all anxieties my safe retreat,
What safety, privacy, what true delight,
In the artificial night
Your gloomy entrails make,
Have I taken, do I take!
How oft, when grief has made me fly,
To hide me from society
Even of my dearest friends, have I
In your recesses’ friendly shade
All my sorrows open laid,
And my most secret woes intrusted to your privacy!
What an over-happy one
Should I think myself to be,
Might I, in this desert place,
Which most men in discourse disgrace,
Live but undisturbed and free!
Here in this despised recess
Would I, maugre winter’s cold
And the summer’s worst excess,
Try to live out to sixty full years old!
And all the while,
Without an envious eye
On any thriving under Fortune’s smile,
Contented live, and then—contented die.