Where "musing Pity" still delights to mourn,
And kiss the spot where oft her votary stood,
Or hang fresh cypress o'er his weeping urn;--
Here, too, retir'd from Folly's scenes afar,
His powerful shell first studious Collins strung;
Whilst Fancy, seated in her rainbow car,
Round him her flowers Parnassian wildly flung.
Stream of the Bards! oft Hayley linger'd here;
And Charlotte Smith[1] hath grac'd thy current with a tear.

_The Author of "A Tradesman's Lays." No. 85, Leather Lane._


[1] This charming, accomplished poetess has addressed one of her
most beautiful "Elegiac Sonnets" to this inspiring River.
Her tender image of the "infant Otway" is, however, borrowed
from a stanza in Collins's inimitable "Ode to Pity:"--

"Wild Arun, too, has heard thy strains
And echo 'midst my native plains
Been sooth'd by Pity's lute;
There first the wren thy myrtles shed
On gentlest Otway's _infant head_--
To him thy cell was shown," &c.

* * * * *



RETROSPECTIVE GLEANINGS.