In solitude long would he stay,
And long lock'd in silence his tongue;
Then he humm'd an elegiac lay,

Or a psalm penitential he sung:
But if with his friends he regal'd,

His mirth, as his griefs knew no bounds;
In no Tale of Mark Sargent he fail'd,
Nor in all Robin Hood's Derry-downs.

Thro' the poor Widow's long lonely years,
Her Father supported us all :

Yet sure she was loaded with cares,

Being left with six children so small. Meagre want never lifted her latch;

Her cottage was still tight and clean; And the casement beneath it's low thatch Commanded a view o'er the Green:

O'er the Green, where so often she blest
The return of a husband or son,
Coming happily home to their rest,
At night, when their labour was done:
Where so oft in her earlier years,

She, with transport maternal, has seen (While plying her housewifely cares)

Her children all safe on the Green.

The Green was our pride through the

year:

For in Spring, when the wild flow'rets blew,

Tho' many rich pastures were near,
Where cowslips and daffodils grew;
And tho' such gallant flow'rs were our choice,
It was bliss interrupted by fear-
The fear of their Owner's dread voice,

Harshly brawling "You've no business here.”

While the Green, tho' but daisies it's boast,
Was free as the flow'rs to the bee;

In all seasons the Green we lov❜d most,
Because on the Green we were free;
'Twas the prospect that first met my eyes,
And memory still blesses the scene;
For early my heart learnt to prize
The freedom of Honington Green.

No peasant had pin'd at his lot,

Tho' new fences the lone heath enclose; For, alas! the blest days are forgot,

When poor men had their sheep and their cows. Still had Labour been blest with Content,

Still Competence happy had been,

Nor Indigence utter'd a plaint,

Had Avarice spar'd but the Green.

Not Avarice itself could be mov'd
By desire of a morsel so small:
It could not be lucre he lov'd;

But to rob the poor folk of their all.
He in wantonness ope'd his wide jaws,
As a Shark may disport with the Fry;
Or a Lion, when licking his paws,
May wantonly snap at a Fly.

Could there live such an envious man,

Who endur'd not the halcyon scene,

When the infantine peasantry ran,

And roll❜d on the daisy-deck'd Green?

Ah! sure 'twas Envy's despite,
Lest Indigence tasted of bliss,

That sternly decreed they've no right

To innocent pleasure like this.

Tho' the youth of to-day must deplore
The rough mounds that now sadden the scene,
The vain stretch of Misanthrophy's power,

The enclosure of Honington Green:
Yet when not a green turf is left free,
When not one odd nook is left wild,
Will the children of Honington be

Less blest than when I was a child?.

No!-childhood shall find the scene fair:
Then here let me cease my complaint;
Still shall health be inhal'd with the air,
Which at Honington cannot be taint:
And tho' Age may still talk of the Green,
Of the Heath, and free Commons of
yore,
Youth shall joy in the new-fangled scene,
And boast of that change we deplore.

Dear to me was the wild-thorny hill;
And dear the brown heath's sober scene:

And youth shall find happiness still,

Tho' he roves not on common or green: Tho' the pressure of wealth's lordly hand Shall give emulation no scope,

And tho' all the appropriate land

Shall leave Indigence nothing to hope.

So happily flexile man's make,

So pliantly docile his mind,
Surrounding impressions we take,
And bliss in each circumstance find.

The youths of a more polish'd age

Shall not wish these rude commons to see;

To the bird that's inur'd to the cage,

It would not be bliss to be free.

D

VERSES WRITTEN AT DUNWICH,

BY HENRY DELL.

Dunwich, once an important, opulent and commercial city, but now a mean village, stands on a cliff of considerable height, commanding an extensive view of the German ocean. The present ruinous state of this once flourishing place is owing chiefly to the repeated encroachments of the sea. Seated upon a hill composed of loam and sand of a loose texture, on a coast destitute of rocks, it is not surprising that its buildings should have successively yielded to the impetuosity of the billows, breaking against, and easily undermining the foot of the precipices; and probably in a few years they may oblige the constituent body to betake themselves to a boat, whenever the king's writ shall summon them to the exercise of their elective franchise; as the necessity of adhering to forms, in the farcical solemnity of borough elections, is not to be dispensed with. This town once contained eight parish churches; three chapels; a house belonging to the knights templars; two monasteries; and two hospitals; and a mint. All Saints is now the only church of which any portion remains. In former times a wood, called east wood or the king's forest, extended several miles south-east of the town, but it has been for many ages swallowed up by the sea. Contiguous to this was

another wood, from its relative situation denominated west wood. Though many of the traditionary accounts relative to this town are probably fabulous, yet it is certain that it is a place of very high antiquity. It is conjectured by some to have been a station of the Romans from the number of their coins that have been discovered here. So much is certain, that in the reign of Sigebert, king of the East Angles, Felix, the Burgundian bishop, fixed his episcopal see at Dunwich in the year 636; and here by succession it continued for about two hundred years.

In 1754 was published in 4to "An Historical Ac"count of Dunwich, &c. by THOMAS GARDner, "illustrated with copperplates," which has now become the scarcest of the Suffolk Topographical works.

YE venerable walls with ivy crown'd,

The sad remains of ancient Gothic state, Whose scatter'd honors, strew the hallow'd ground; The spoils of time and unrelenting fate.

Thy pomp, thy pow'r, O Dunwich, now's no more;
Lost is thy splendor, sunk in endless night;
Fair trade and commerce have forsook thy shore,
And all thy pristine glories vanish'd quite.

Thy pleasant hills, thy vales, thy rich domains, The sea's devouring surge hath wash'd away; Disclosed the graves,* and gave their last remains To the remorseless waves, a fated prey.

Ah what avails that once those sacred dead,
Supreme in arts, and arms, or glory shone?
Alas how vain! each high distinction's fled,
And all their blooming honors now are gone.

All sublunary things thus pass away,

Old ocean's self, shall thus a period find;
The cloud-capt tow'rs, the pompous domes decay,
All, all dissolve, nor leave a wreck behind.

Here oft the Muse with rapture loves to stray,
And o'er these ruins, far from noise and folly,
Thro' solitary glooms, she takes her way,
In pensive mood, indulging melancholy.

Beneath these moss-grown stones, the waste of years,
Lies many a heart now mouldered into dust,
Whose kindred spirits grace the angelic spheres ;
Completely blest, and perfect with the just.

By the continual falling of the cliff, the remains of the dead are frequently washed from the repositories, and scattered upon the beach.