Classic Poem

O Shades of Hagley! where is now your boast?
Your bright inhabitant is lost.
You she preferr'd to all the gay resorts
Where female vanity might wish to shine,
The pomp of cities and the pride of courts:
Her modest beauties shunn'd the publick eye;
To your sequester'd dales
And flow'r-embroider'd vales
From an admiring world she chose to fly;
With Nature there retir'd and Nature's God
The silent paths of wisdom trod,
And banish'd ev'ry passion from her breast
But those, the gentlest and the best,
Whose holy flames with energy divine
The virtuous heart enliven and improve,
The conjugal and the maternal love.