Is Nature's dictate. Strange! there should be found, Who, self-imprison'd in their proud saloons, Renounce the odours of the open field For the unscented fictions of the loom; Who, satisfied with only pencill'd scenes, None more admires, the painter's magic skill, And throws Italian light on English walls; But imitative strokes can do no more 420 Than please the eye-Sweet Nature's ev'ry sense. The air salubrious of her lofty hills, The cheering fragrance of her dewy vales, And music of her woods--no works of man 430 Peculiar, and exclusively her own. Beneath the open sky she spreads the feast; Who scorns it starves deservedly at home. His cheek recovers soon it's healthful hue; 440 He walks, he leaps, he runs-is wing'd with joy, And riots in the sweets of ev'ry breeze. He does not scorn it, who has long endur'd A fever's agonies, and fed on drugs. Nor yet the mariner, his blood inflam'd Το gaze at Nature in her green array, Upon the ship's tall side he stands, possess'd With visions prompted by intense desire: 450 Fair fields appear below, such as he left The spleen is seldom felt where Flora reigns; The low'ring eye, the petulance, the frown, And sullen sadness, that o'ershade, distort, And mar, the face of Beauty, when no cause For such immeasurable wo appears, These Flora banishes, and gives the fair 460 Sweet smiles, and bloom less transient than her own. It is the constant revolution, stale And tasteless, of the same repeated joys, That palls, and satiates, and makes languid life Yet thousands still desire to journey on, Though halt, and weary of the path they tread. The paralytic, who can hold her cards, But cannot play them, borrows a friend's hand, To deal and shuffle, to divide and sort Her mingled suits and sequences; and sits, Till the stout bearers lift the corpse again. These speak a loud memento. Yet e'en these That overhangs a torrent, to a twig. They love it, and yet loath it; fear to die, Yet scorn the purposes, for which they live. 470 480 Then wherefore not renounce them? No-the dread, The slavish dread of solitude, that breeds Reflection and remorse, the fear of shame, And their invet'rate habits, all forbid. 490 Whom call we gay? That honour has been long That dries his feathers, saturate with dew, But save me from the gayety of those, Whose headachs nail them to a noonday bed; 500 The Earth was made so various, that the mind |