What art can trace the visionary scenes,
The flow'ry groves, and everlasting greens,
The babbling sounds that mimic echo plays,

The fairy shade, and its eternal maze,
Nature and art in all their charms combin'd!

And all Elysium to one view confin'd!

No further could imagination roam,

'Till Vanbrook fram'd, and Marlbrô' rais'd the dome.
Ten thousand pangs my anxious bosom tear,
When drown'd in tears I see the' imploring fair :
When bards less soft the moving words supply,
A seeming justice dooms the nymph to die;
But here she begs, nor can she beg in vain,
(In dirges thus expiring swans complain)
Each verse so swells, expressive of her woes,
And ev'ry tear in lines so mournful flows;
We, spite of fame, her fate revers'd believe,
O'erlook her crimes, and think she ought to live.

Let joy transport fair Rosamonda's shade,
And wreaths of myrtle crown the lovely maid.
While now perhaps with Dido's ghost she roves,
And hears and tells the story of their loves,

Alike they mourn, alike they bless their fate,
Since love, which made 'em wretched, makes 'em great;
Nor longer that relentless doom bemoan,

Which gain'd a Virgil and an Addison.

Accept, great monarch of the British lays

The tribute song an humble subject pays.

So tries the artless lark her early flight,
And soars, to hail the God of verse, and light.
Unrival'd as thy merit be thy fame,

And thy own laurels shade thy envy'd name

Thy name, the boast of all the tuneful choir,
Shall tremble on the strings of ev'ry lyre;

While the charm'd reader with thy thought complies,
Feels corresponding joys or sorrows rise,

And views thy Rosamond with Henry's eyes.

DRAMATIS PERSONE.

MEN.

KING HENRY.

SIR TRUSTY, Keeper of the Bower.
PAGE.

MESSENGER.

WOMEN.

QUEEN ELINOR.

ROSAMOND.

GRIDELINE, Wife to Sir Trusty.

Guardian Angels, &c.

SCENE, Woodstock Park.

ROSAMOND.

ACT I.

SCENE I.*

A Prospect of Woodstock Park, terminating in the Bower.

Enter QUEEN and PAGE.

QUEEN. What place is here!

What scenes appear !

Where'er I turn my eyes,

All around

Enchanted ground

And soft Elysiums rise:

Flow'ry mountains,

Mossy fountains,

Shady woods,

Chrystal floods,

With wild variety surprise.

As o'er the hollow vaults we walk,"

A hundred echoes round us talk:

From hill to hill the voice is tost,

Rocks rebounding,

Caves resounding,

Not a single word is lost.

PAGE. There gentle Rosamond immured

Lives from the world and you secured.

a The comic scenes of this opera are pleasant and entertaining. Alluding to the famous echo in Woodstock-Park.

QUEEN. Curse on the name! I faint, I die,
With secret pangs of jealousy.-

[Aside.

PAGE. There does the pensive beauty mourn,

And languish for her lord's return.

QUEEN. Death and confusion! I'm too slow

Show me the happy mansion, show

[Aside.

PAGE. Great Henry there

QUEEN. Trifler, no more!

PAGE. Great Henry there

Will soon forget the toils of war.

QUEEN. No more! the happy mansion show

That holds this lovely guilty foe.

My wrath, like that of heav'n, shall rise,

And blast her in her paradise.

PAGE. Behold on yonder rising ground
The bower,' that wanders

In meanders,

The king, therefore, for her defence,
Against the furious queene,

At Woodstocke builded such a bower
The like was never seene.

Most curiously that bower was built
Of stone and timber strong;
An hundered and fifty doors
Did to this bower belonge.

And they so cunninglye contrived,

With turnings round about,

That none but with a clue of thread

Could enter in or out.

FAIR ROSAMOND.-Percy's Reliques of Ancient English
Poetry, v. 2, pp. 156-7.

Hearne, who wrote in 1718, a discourse upon Rosamond, says, "That by the pool at Woodstock were still to be seen the foundations of a very large building, which were believed to be the remains of Rosamond's labyrinth."-G.