Of simple and complex Ideas I’ve read, How they rose into Life and spring up in my Head; That the Frolicks I love, and the Fashions I hate, Are from Causes without, and they rule not innate; I’ve studied with stupid Attention and Skill The Destiny’s Law, and the Bounds of the Will; Of Systems confuted, and Systems explain’d; Of Science disputed, and Tenets maintain’d; How Matter and Spirit dissent or unite; How vary the Natures of Fire and of Light; 50 How Bodies excentric, concentric shall be; How Authors divide where they seem to agree; How dissenting unite, by a Touch of the Quill Which bodies a Meaning, in what Form they will: These and such Speculations, on these Kind of Things, Have robb’d my poor Muse of her Plume and her Wings; Consum’d the Phlogiston you us’d to admire; The Spirit extracted, extinguished the Fire; Let out all the Aether so pure and refin’d, And left but a mere Caput-Mortuum behind. 60 Ah, Priestley! thou Foe to my Numbers, what need To shock my poor Muses? Thou dost not my Creed, With Schemes, Dissertations, and Arguments strong Which I know not how right, and I care not how wrong. Thou great Necessarian, must I suppose The Flight of my Verse is o’er rul’d by thy prose; And that Matters have been unavoidably led, That thou must have written, and I must have read? ’Tis certain—for what but a Bias of Fate Could have tied me so long to the Subjects I hate? 70 O! blest be the Time, when, my Mira, we stray’d Where the Nightingale perch’d, and the wanton winds play’d; Where these were the Secrets of Nature we knew, That her Roses were red, and her Vi’lets were blue; That soft was the Gloom of the Summer-swell’d shade, And melting the Fall of the dying Cascade. Blest, the Song shall repeat, be the Pleasures that reign In the plenty-prest Vale, on the green-vested Plain! Give Locke to the Winds, and lay Hume on the Fire; Let Metaphysicians in Darkness expire, 80 And Fatalists, Fabulists, Logicians fall by The Laws which Necessity modulates all by; Let the Slumber of Sense, and the Silence of Spleen, Lay hold upon Priestley, that learned Machine; Or, what will to us, my dear Maid, be the same, May we cease to admire each ostensible Name, And, blest with those Pleasures the Muses desire, See Learning, unenvied, to Students retire! [FROM BELVOIR CASTLE.] [About 1782–3.] Oh! had I but a little hut That I might hide my head in; Where never guest might dare molest, Unwelcome or unbidden. I’d take the jokes of other folks And mine should then succeed ’em; Nor would I chide a little pride, Or heed a little freedom. THE LADIES OF THE LAKE. [Normanston, 1785.]