The English Garden: A Poem in Four Books

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A. Ward, 1783 - 243 pages
 

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Page i - GOD ALMIGHTY first planted a Garden. And indeed it is the purest of human pleasures. It is the greatest refreshment to the spirits of man; without which buildings and palaces are but gross...
Page 48 - The liberty they lend, oft shalt thou hear Their whistle shrill, and oft their faithful dog Shall with obedient barkings fright the flock From wrong or robbery. The livelong day Meantime rolls lightly o'er their happy heads; They...
Page 204 - ... there may be other forms wholly irregular, that may, for aught I know, have more beauty than any of the others; but they must owe it to some extraordinary dispositions of nature in the seat, or some great race of fancy or judgment in the contrivance, which may reduce many disagreeing parts into some figure, which shall yet, upon the whole, be very agreeable.
Page 205 - ... many disagreeing parts into some figure, which shall yet, upon the whole, be very agreeable. Something of this I have seen in some places, but heard more of it from others who have lived much among the Chineses ; a people, whose way of thinking seems to lie as wide of ours in Europe, as their country does.
Page 89 - A time-struck abbey.* An impending grove Screens it behind with reverential shade ; While bright in front the stream reflecting spreads, Which winds a mimic river o'er his lawn. The fane conventual there is dimly...
Page 217 - Letters, and more from Chambers's little discourse, published some years ago ;* but it is very certain we copied nothing from them, nor had any thing but Nature for our model. It is not forty years since the art was born among us...
Page 203 - For all that nature by her mother wit Could frame in earth, and forme of substance base, Was there, and all that nature did omit, Art playing second natures part, supplyed it.
Page 205 - ... there may be more honour if they succeed well, yet there is more dishonour if they fail, and it is twenty to one they will , whereas in regular figures it is hard to make any great and remarkable faults.
Page 216 - He is highly civil to our nation ; but there is one point in which he does not do us justice ; I am the more solicitous about it, because it relates to the only taste we can call our own; the only proof of our original talent in matter of pleasure, I mean our skill in gardening, or rather...
Page 23 - The pencil's power : f but, fir'd by higher forms Of beauty, than that pencil knew to paint, Work'd with the living hues that Nature lent, And realiz'd his landscapes.

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