Contents -BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD

Samuel Kettell, ed. Specimens of American Poetry. 1829.

By A Flight of Fancy

William Cliffton (1772–1799)

FOR lonely shades, and rustic bed,

Let philosophic spirits sigh;

I ask no melancholy shed,

No hermit’s dreary cave, not I.

But where, to skirt some pleasant vale,

Ascends the rude uncultured hill,

Where ’midst its cliffs to every gale,

Young Echo mocks the passing rill:

Where spring to every merry year,

Delighted trips her earliest round;

Sees all her varied tints appear,

And all her fragrant soul abound;

There let my little villa rise,

In beauty’s simple plumage drest:

And greet with songs the morning skies,

Sweet bird of art, in nature’s nest!

Descending there, on golden wing,

Shall fancy, with her bounties roam;

And every laurell’d art shall bring

An offering fair to deck my home.

Green beds of moss, in dusky cells,

When twilight sleeps from year to year,

And fringed plats, where Flora dwells,

With the wild wood shall neighbor near.

The fairies through my walks shall roam,

And sylphs inhabit every tree;

Come Ariel, subtlest spirit, come,

I ’ll find a blossom there for thee;

Extended wide, the diverse scene,

My happy casement shall command,

The busy farm, the pasture green,

And tufts where shelter’d hamlets stand.

Some dingle oft shall court my eye

To dance among the flow’rets there,

And here a lucid lake shall lie,

Emboss’d with many an islet fair.

From crag to crag, with devious sweep,

Some frantic flood shall headlong go,

And, bursting o’er the dizzy steep,

Shall slumber in the lake below.

In breezy isles and forests near,

The sylvans oft their haunts shall leave;

And oft the torrent pause to hear

The lake-nymph’s song, at silent eve.

There shall the moon with half shut eye,

Delirious, hear her vocal beam,

To fingering sounds responsive sigh,

And bless the hermit’s midnight dream.

No magic weed nor poison fell

Shall tremble there; nor drug uncouth,

To round the muttering wizard’s spell,

Or bathe with death the serpent’s tooth.

No crusted ditch nor festering fen

With plagues shall teem, a deadly brood.

No monster leave his nightly den

To lap the ’wilder’d pilgrim’s blood.

But on the rose’s dewy brink,

Each prismy tear shall catch the gleam;

And give the infant buds to drink,

The colors of the morning beam.

The waters sweet, from whispering wells,

Shall loiter ’neath the flowery brake;

Shall visit oft the Naiad’s cells,

And hie them to the silver lake.

The muse shall hail, at peep of dawn,

Melodiously the coming day;

At eve her song shall soothe the lawn,

And with the mountain echoes play.

There spring shall laugh at winter’s frown,

There summer blush for gamesome spring,

And autumn, prank’d in wheaten crown,

His stores to hungry winter bring.

’T is mine! ’t is mine! this sacred grove,

Where truth and beauty may recline,

The sweet resort of many a love;

Monimia, come and make it thine.

For thee the bursting buds are ripe,

The whistling robin calls thee here,

To thee complains the woodland pipe;

Will not my loved Monimia hear?

A fawn I ’ll bring thee, gentle maid,

To gambol round thy pleasant door;

I ’ll curl thee wreaths that ne’er shall fade,

What shall I say to tempt thee more?

The blush that warms thy maiden cheek,

The morning eye’s sequester’d tear,

For me, thy kindling passion speak

And chain this subtle vision here.

Spots of delight, and many a day

Of summer love for me shall shine;

In truth my beating heart is gay,

At sight of that fond smile of thine.

Come, come, my love, away with me,

The morn of life is hastening by,

To this gay scene we ’ll gaily flee,

And sport us ’neath the peaceful sky.

And when that awful day shall rise,

That sees thy cheek with age grow pale,

And the soul fading in thine eyes,

We ’ll sigh and quit the weeping vale.