Youths, even to you, who bent before to me. O, my companions, by our happy plays, By dear remembrance of departed days; By pity's self, your cruel parents move; By sacred friendship; Oh! by those ye love! Oft when ye trespassed, I for pardon pray'd; Oft on myself your little mischiefs laid. Did I not always sooth the wounded mind? Was I not called the generous and the kind? Still silent? What! no word, no look to cheer? No gentle gesture? What, not even a tear? Go then, ye pure! to heights of virtue climb; Let none plead for me, none forgive my crime. Go--yet the culprit, by her God forgiven, May plead for you before the throne of heaven! Ye simple pleasures of my rural hours, Ye skies all sunshine, and ye paths all flowers; Home, where no more a soothing friend I see, Dear happy home, a last farewell to thee!' Claspt are her hands, her features strewn with hair, And her eyes sparkle with a keen despair. But as she turns, a sudden burst of tears, And struggles, as of one withheld, she hears. 'Speak!' she conjures, 'ere yet to phrenzy driven, Tell me who weeps? What angel sent from heaven?' 'I, I your friend!' exclaims, with panting charms, A rosy girl, and darts into her arms. 'What! will you leave me? Me, your other heart, Your favourite Ellen? No, we must not part; No, never! come, and in our cottage live; Come, for the cruel village shall forgive. O, my own darling, come, and unreproved, Here on this heart rest ever, ever lov'd; Here on this constant heart!' While thus she spoke, Her furious sire the linkt embraces broke. Borne in his arms, she wept, entreated, rav'd; Then fainted, as a mute farewell she wav'd. But now the wretch, with low and wildered cries, Round and around revolving vacant eyes: Slow from the green departs, and pauses now, And gnaws her tresses and contracts her brow. Shock'd by the change, the matrons, stern no more, Pursue her steps and her return implore: Soon a poor maniac, innocent of ill, She wanders unconfined, and drinks the rill, And plucks the simple cress. A hovel near Her native vale defends her from the year. With tender feet to flint and thistle bare, And faded willows weeping in her hair, She climbs some rock at morn, and all alone, Chaunts hasty snatches of harmonious moan. When moons empearl the leafy locks of bowers, With liquid grain, and light the glistening flowers, She gathers honeysuckle down the dells, And tangled eglantine, and slumbering bells; And with moist finger, painted by the leaves, A coronet of roses interweaves; Then steals unheard, and gliding thro' the yews, The odorous offering on her mother strews. At morn with tender pause, the nymphs admire, How recent chaplets still the grave attire; And matrons nightly tell, how fairies seen,