That self-condemned they must neglect the prize, And what they will not taste must yet approve. What we admire we praise; and, when we praise Advance it into notice, that is worth Acknowledged, others may admire it too. I therefore recommend, though at the risk Of popular disgust, yet boldly still,
The cause of piety, and sacred truth,
And virtue, and those scenes, which God ordained Should best secure them, and promote them most, Scenes that I love, and with regret perceive Forsaken, or through folly not enjoyed.
Pure is the nymph, though liberal of her smiles, And chaste, though unconfined, whom I extol, Not as the prince in Shushan, when he called, Vainglorious of her charms, his Vashti forth, To grace the full pavilion. His design Was but to boast his own peculiar good, Which all might view with envy, none partake. My charmer is not mine alone; my sweets, And she that sweetens all my bitters too, Nature, enchanting Nature, in whose form And lineaments divine I trace a hand That errs not, and find raptures still renewed, Is free to all men-universal prize.
Strange that so fair a creature should yet want Admirers and be destined to divide
With meaner objects e'en the few she finds; Stripped of her ornaments, her leaves and flowers, She loses all her influence. Cities then Attract us, and neglected Nature pines Abandoned, as unworthy of our love.
But are not wholesome airs, though unperfumed By roses; and clear suns, though scarcely felt; And groves, if unharmonious, yet secure From clamour, and whose very silence charms; To be preferred to smoke, to the eclipse That metropolitan volcanoes make,
Whose Stygian throats breathe darkness all day long?
And to the stir of Commerce, driving slow,
And thundering loud, with his ten thousand wheels; They would be, were not madness in the head, And folly in the heart; were England now What England was,-plain, hospitable, kind, And undebauched. But we have bid farewell To all the virtues of those better days,
And all their honest pleasures. Mansions once Knew their own masters; and laborious hinds, Who had survived the father, served the son. Now the legitimate and rightful lord Is but a transient guest, newly arrived, As soon to be supplanted. He, that saw His patrimonial timber cast its leaf,
Sells the last scantling, and transfers the price To some shrewd sharper, ere it buds again. Estates are landscapes, gazed upon awhile Then advertised, and auctioneered away. The country starves, and they that feed th' o'er- charged
And surfeited lewd town with her fair dues, By a just judgment strip and starve themselves. The wings that waft our riches out of sight, Grow on the gamester's elbows; and th' alert And nimble motion of those restless joints, That never tire, soon fans them all away. Improvement too, the idol of the age, Is fed with many a victim. Lo, he comes ! The omnipotent magician, Brown, appears! Down falls the venerable pile, th' abode Of our forefathers a grave whiskered race, But tasteless. Springs a palace in its stead, But in a distant spot; where more exposed It may enjoy th' advantage of the north, And aguish east, till time shall have transformed Those naked acres to a sheltering grove.
He speaks. The lake in front becomes a lawn; Woods vanish, hills subside, and valleys rise; And streams, as if created for his use, Pursue the tract of his directing wand, Sinuous or straight, now rapid and now slow, Now murmuring soft, now roaring in cascades- E'en as he bids! Th' enraptured owner smiles. "Tis finished, and yet, finished as it seems, Still wants a grace, the loveliest it could show, A mine to satify th' enormous cost.
Drained to the last poor item of its wealth,
He sighs, departs, and leaves th' accomplished plan That he has touched, retouched, many a long day Laboured, and many a night pursued in dreams, Just when it meets his hopes, and proves the heaven He wanted, for a wealthier to enjoy!
And now perhaps the glorious hour is come, When, having no stake left, no pledge t' endear Her interests, or that gives her sacred cause A moment's operation on his love,
He burns with most intense and flagrant zeal To serve his country. Ministerial
grace Deals him out money from the public chest ; Or, if that mine be shut, some private purse Supplies his need with a usurious loan, To be refunded duly, when his vote, Well-managed, shall have earned its worthy price. O innocent, compared with arts like these, Crape, and cocked pistol, and the whisting ball Sent through the traveller's temples! He that finds One drop of Heaven's sweet mercy in his cup, Can dig, beg, rot, and perish, well content, So he may wrap himself in honest rags At his last gasp; but could not for a world Fish up his dirty and dependant bread From pools and ditches of the commonwealth, Sordid and sickening at his own success. Ambition, avarice, penury incurred
By endless riot, vanity, the lust Of pleasure and variety, despatch, As duly as the swallows disappear
The world of wandering knights and squires to town London ingulfs them all! The shark is there, And the shark's prey; the spendthrift, and the leech That sucks him; there the sycophant, and he Who with bareheaded and obsequious bows Begs a warm office, doomed to a cold jail And groat per diem, if his patron frown. The levee swarms, as if in golden pomp Were charactered on every statesman's door, 'Battered and bankrupt fortunes mended here.' These are the charms, that sully and eclipse The charms of nature. "Tis the cruel gripe, That lean, hard-handed Poverty inflicts, The hope of better things, the chance to win, The wish to shine, the thirst to be amused, That at the sound of Winter's hoary wing Unpeople all our counties of such herds Of fluttering, loitering, cringing, begging, loose, And wanton vagrants, as make London, vast And boundless as it is, a crowded coop.
O thou, resort and mart of all the earth, Checkered with all complexions of mankind, And spotted with all crimes; in whom I see Much that I love, and more that I admire, And all that I abhor; thou freckled fair, That pleasest and yet shock'st me, I can laugh, And I can weep, can hope, and can despond, Feel wrath and pity, when I think on thee! Ten righteous would have saved a city once, And thou hast many righteous.-Well for thee- That salt preserves thee; more corrupted else, And therefore more obnoxious, at this hour, Than Sodom in her day had power to be, For whom God heard his Abraham plead in vain.
THE post comes in.-The newspaper is read.-The world contemplated at a distance.-Address to Winter.-The rural amusements of a winter evening compared with the fashionable ones.-Address to evening.-A brown study.-Fall of snow in the evening. The wagoner.-A poor family-piece. The rural thief.-Public houses.-The multitude of them censured. The farmer's daughter; what she was-what she is.-The simplicity of country manners almost lost.-Causes of the change.Desertion of the country by the rich.-Neglect of magistrates.-The militia principally in fault.-The new recruit and his transformation.Reflection on bodies corporate. The love of rural objects natural to all, and never to be totally extinguished.
HARK! 'tis the twanging horn o'er yonder bridge, That with its wearisome but needful length Bestrides the wintry flood, in which the moon Sees her unwrinkled face reflected bright;- He comes, the herald of a noisy world,
With spattered boots, strapped waist, and frozen locks; News from all nations lumbering at his back. True to his charge, the close packed load behind, Yet careless what he brings, his one concern Is to conduct it to the destined inn ;
And, having dropped th' expected bag, pass on. He whistles as he goes, light-hearted wretch, Cold and yet cheerful: messenger of grief Perhaps to thousands, and of joy to some; To him indifferent whether grief or joy. Houses in ashes, and the fall of stocks, Births, deaths, and marriages, epistles wet With tears, that trickled down the writer's cheeks, Fast as the periods from his fluent quill,
Or charged with amorous sighs of absent swains, Or nymphs responsive, equally affect
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