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Soft bosoms breathe around contagious sighs,
And amorous music on the water dies.
How bless'd, delicious scene! the eye that greets
Thy open beauties, or thy lone retreats;
Th' unwearied sweep of wood thy cliffs that scales;
The never-ending waters of thy vales;
The cots, those dim religious groves embower,
Or, under rocks that from the water tower
Insinuated, sprinkling all the shore,
Each with his household boat beside the door,
Whose flaccid sails in forms fantastic droop,
Bright'ning the gloom where thick the forests stoop;
Thy torrents shooting from the clear-blue sky,
Thy towns, like swallows' nests that cleave on high;
That glimmer hoar in eve's last light, descry'd
Dim from the twilight water's shaggy side,
Whence lutes and voices down the enchanted woods
Steal, and compose the oar-forgotten floods,
While Evening's solemn bird melodious weeps,
Heard, by star-spotted bays, beneath the steeps;
Thy lake, mid smoking woods, that blue and grey
Gleams, streaked or dappled, hid from morning's ray
Slow travelling down the western hills, to fold
