First line: ‘O thou, my Master, and my friend’. These verses must have been written some time between 1765 and 1783 when Capability Brown was landscaping Spencer’s estate at Wimbledon Park. They were evidently written while Brown and Spencer were still alive (both died in 1783). The phrase ‘torturing regularity’ also occurs in William Mason’s ‘Ode to a Water Nymph’, first published in Dodsley’s Collection in 1748.
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Transcript
Althrops petition to Lord Spencer
O thou, my Master, and my friend,
Thy lov’d Althropia’s voice attend;
Long have I griev’d with jealous ear
My younger+ {1} Sister’s praise to hear;
How all her various beauties rise,
And strike the view with sweet surprize;
While I neglected & forlorn
My uncouth habit daily mourn.
—Yet Ah! reflect;—should all thy care
With lavish hand be scatter’d there?
With her you indolently rest,
Or live with Visiters opprest;
With me you wake the slumb’ring Morn,
And cheer the hounds with echoing horn.
Oh.! then my fond petition hear,
And think me worth a Master’s care.
Or else my utmost wish to crown,
Oh! send me Nature’s favorite Brown,
Well-skilld her blemishes to hide,
And set ev’n faults on Beauty’s side.
Let him my burden’d acres free,
From torturing regularity;
And teach the eye around to hail
Sweet interchange of Hill, & Dale;
Let him my ductile waters lead,
In circling course along the Mead;
And move the veil which Art hath drawn
O’er pendent Slope, and varied Lawn.
Then, ’tho my haughty Rival boast
Her beauties form’d by pains, and Cost;
No proud Comparisons I fear,
When once my genuine charms appear.
Nor shal’t thou fin’d the alter’d plains
Ungrateful to their Owner’s pains;
Perhaps within those pleasing groves
Sacred to chaste connubial Loves,
Where Sacharissa fair, & young
By artful Waller once was sung;
Thy Georgiana may inspire
Some future Bard to strike the Lyre;
To feel, & what he feels express,
Domestick real Happiness;
Which those by Heaven’s indulgent care
Hast Sense to prize, and power to share.
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{1} Footnote: ‘+Wimbleton’, i.e. Wimbledon.