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<div style="background:#fff;border:#bbb dashed 1px;padding:5px"><a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=539267" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><div style="margin:10px 0"><strong>Elegy XIV. Declining an Invitation To Visit Foreign Countries</strong></div><div style="margin:10px 0">DECLINING AN INVITATION TO VISIT FOREIGN COUNTRIES, HE TAKES OCCASION TO INTIMATE THE ADVANTAGES OF HIS OWN. TO LORD TEMPLE.</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br>While others, lost to friendship, lost to love,<br>Waste their best minutes on a foreign strand,<br>Be mine, with British nymph or swain to rove,<br>And court the Genius of my native land.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Deluded Youth! that quits these verdant plains,<br>To catch the follies of an alien soil!<br>To win the vice his genuine soul disdains,<br>Return exultant, and import the spoil!</div><div style="margin:10px 0">In vain he boasts of his detested prize;<br>No more it blooms, to British climes convey'd;<br>Cramp'd by the impulse of ungenial skies,<br>See its fresh vigour in a moment fade;</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Th' exotic folly knows its native clime;<br>An awkward stranger, if we waft it o'er;<br>Why then these toils, this costly waste of time,<br>To spread soft poison on our happy shore?</div><div style="margin:10px 0">I covet not the pride of foreign looms;<br>In search of foreign modes I scorn to rove;<br>Nor, for the worthless bird of brighter plumes,<br>Would change the meanest warbler of my grove.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">No distant clime shall servile airs impart,<br>Or form these limbs with pliant ease to play;<br>Trembling I view the Gaul's illusive art,<br>That steals my loved rusticity away.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">'Tis long since Freedom fled th' Hesperian clime,<br>Her citron groves, her flower-embroider'd shore;<br>She saw the British oak aspire sublime,<br>And soft Campania's olive charms no more.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Let partial suns mature the western mine,<br>To shed its lustre o'er th' Iberian maid;<br>Mien, beauty, shape, O native soil! are thine;<br>Thy peerless daughters ask no foreign aid.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Let Ceylon's envied plant perfume the seas,<br>Till torn to season the Batavian bowl;<br>Ours is the breast whose genuine ardours please,<br>Nor need a drug to meliorate the soul.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Let the proud Soldan wound th' Arcadian groves,<br>Or with rude lips th' Aonian fount profane;<br>The Muse no more by flowery Ladon roves,<br>She seeks her Thomson on the British plain.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Tell not of realms by ruthless war dismay'd;<br>Ah, hapless realms! that war's oppression feel;<br>In vain may Austria boast her Noric blade,<br>If Austria bleed beneath her boasted steel.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Beneath her palm Idume vents her moan;<br>Raptured, she once beheld its friendly shade;<br>And hoary Memphis boasts her tombs alone,<br>The mournful types of mighty power decay'd!</div><div style="margin:10px 0">No Crescent here displays its baneful horns;<br>No turban'd host the voice of Truth reproves;<br>Learning's free source the sage's breast adorns,<br>And poets, not inglorious, chant their loves.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Boast, favour'd Media! boast thy flowery stores;<br>Thy thousand hues by chemic suns refined;<br>'Tis not the dress or mien my soul adores,<br>'Tis the rich beauties of Britannia's mind.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">While Grenville's breast could virtue's stores afford,<br>What envied flota bore so fair a freight?<br>The mine compared in vain its latent hoard,<br>The gem its lustre, and the gold its weight.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Thee, Grenville! thee, with calmest courage fraught!<br>Thee, the loved image of thy native shore!<br>Thee, by the Virtues arm'd, the Graces taught!<br>When shall we cease to boast or to deplore?</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Presumptuous War, which could thy life destroy,<br>What shall it now in recompence decree?<br>While friends that merit every earthly joy,<br>Feel every anguish; feel-the loss of thee!</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Bid me no more a servile realm compare,<br>No more the Muse of partial praise arraign;<br>Britannia sees no foreign breast so fair,<br>And, if she glory, glories not in vain.</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br /></a><br />poem by <a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/by.php?a=William+Shenstone">William Shenstone</a><div class=q>
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While others, lost to friendship, lost to love,
Waste their best minutes on a foreign strand,
Be mine, with British nymp..."></div>
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