And COLIN'S voice rings through the woods from the fold.

The Wood to the Mountain submissively bends,
Whose blue misty summits first glow with the sun!
See thence a gay train by the wild rill descends
To join the glad sports:... hark! the tumult's begun.

Be cloudless, ye skies!... Be my Colin but there,
Not the dew-spangled bents on the wide level Dale,
Nor Morning's first blush can more lovely appear
Than his looks, since my wishes I could not conceal.

Swift down the mad dance, while blest health prompts to move,
We'll count joys to come, and exchange Vows of truth;
And haply when Age cools the transports of Love,
Decry, like good folks, the vain pleasures of youth.

No, no; the remembrance shall ever be dear!
At no time LOVE with INNOCENCE ceases to charm:
It is transport in Youth ... and it smiles through the tear,
When they feel, in their children, its first soft alarm.

The Writer of this Preface doubts whether he has been successful in adding
the last Stanza to this beautiful and simply expressive song. But he
imagin'd that some thought of this kind was in the mind of the Author: and
he was willing to endeavour to express it. The Breast which has felt Love,
justly shrinks from the idea of its total extinction, as from annihilation
itself. And there is even an high social and moral use in that order of
Providence which exalts Sensations into tender and benign Passions; those
Passions into habitual Affections yet more tender; and raises from those