Retires, content to quake, so they be warmed.
The man feels least, as more inured than she
To winter, and the current in his veins
More briskly moved by his severer toil;
Yet he too finds his own distress in theirs. 390
The taper soon extinguished, which I saw
Dangled along at the cold finger's end
Just when the day declined, and the brown loaf
Lodged on the shelf, half-eaten without sauce Of savoury cheese, or butter costlier still, 395 Sleep seems their only refuge: for, alas! Where penury is felt the thought is chained, And sweet colloquial pleasures are but few. With all this thrift they thrive not. All the
The effect of laziness or sottish waste.
Now goes the nightly thief prowling abroad
For plunder, much solicitous how best
He may compensate for a day of sloth,
By works of darkness and nocturnal
wrong.
Woe to the gardener's pale, the farmer's hedge
Plashed neatly, and secured with driven stakes
Deep in the loamy bank. strength,
Resistless in so bad a cause, but lame
To better deeds, he bundles up the spoil, 440
An ass's burden, and when laden most
And heaviest, light of foot steals fast away.
Nor does the boarded hovel better guard
The well-stacked pile of riven logs and roots
From his pernicious force. Nor will he
leave
Unwrenched the door, however well secured,
Where chanticleer amidst his harem sleeps
In unsuspecting pomp. Twitched from the
perch,
He gives the princely bird, with all his wives,
To his voracious bag, struggling in vain, 450
And loudly wondering at the sudden change.
Nor this to feed his own! 'T were some ex-
cuse,
Did pity of their sufferings warp aside
His principle, and tempt him into sin
For their support, so destitute. But they 455
Neglected pine at home, themselves, as more
Exposed than others, with less scruple made
His victims, robbed of their defenceless all.
Cruel is all he does. 'T is quenchless thirst
Of ruinous ebriety that prompts
His every action, and imbrutes the man.
Oh for a law to noose the villain's neck
Who starves his own, who persecutes the
blood
He gave them in his children's veins, and hates
And wrongs the woman he has sworn to love.
Pass where we may, through city or through town,
Village or hamlet, of this merry land, Though lean and beggared, every twentieth pace
Plaintive and piteous, as it wept and wailed Its wasted tones, and harmony unheard: 480 Fierce the dispute, whate'er the theme; while she,
Fell Discord, arbitress of such debate, Perched on the signpost, holds with even hand
Her undecisive scales. In this she lays
A weight of ignorance; in that, of pride; 485 And smiles delighted with the eternal poise. Dire is the frequent curse, and its twin sound
The cheek-distending oath, not to be praised As ornamental, musical, polite,
Like those which modern senators employ,
Whose oath is rhetoric, and who swear for fame.
Behold the schools in which plebeian minds,
Once simple, are initiated in arts,
Which some may practise with politer grace,
But none with readier skill!-'Tis here
they learn
Her artless manners, and her neat attire,
So dignified, that she was hardly less
Than the fair shepherdess of old romance,
Is seen no more. The character is lost!
Her head adorned with lappets pinned
aloft
And ribbons streaming gay, superbly raised,
And magnified beyond all human size,
Indebted to some smart wig-weaver's hand
For more than half the tresses it sustains;
Her elbows ruffled, and her tottering
form
Ill propped upon French heels; she might be deemed
But that the basket dangling on her arm
Interprets her more truly) of a rank
Too proud for dairy work, or sale of eggs.
Expect her soon with footboy at her
No longer blushing for her awkward load,
Her train and her umbrella all her care.
The town has tinged the country; and the
stain
But here and there an ugly smutch appears. Foh! 't was a bribe that left it: he has touched
Corruption! Whoso seeks an audit here 610 Propitious, pays his tribute, game or fish, Wildfowl or venison, and his errand speeds.
But faster far, and more than all the rest, A noble cause, which none who bears a spark Of public virtue ever wished removed, Works the deplored and mischievous effect. 'T is universal soldiership has stabbed The heart of merit in the meaner class. Arms, through the vanity and brainless rage Of those that bear them, in whatever cause, 620 Seem most at variance with all moral good, And incompatible with serious thought. The clown, the child of nature, without guile, Blest with an infant's ignorance of all But his own simple pleasures, now and then
To break some maiden's and his mother's heart;
To be a pest where he was useful once;
Are his sole aim, and all his glory now.
Man in society is like a flower
Blown in its native bed; 't is there alone 660
His faculties, expanded in full bloom,
Shine out; there only reach their proper use.
But man associated and leagued with man
By regal warrant, or self-joined by bond.
For interest sake, or swarming into clans 665
Beneath one head for purposes of war,
Like flowers selected from the rest, and
bound
And bundled close to fill some crowded vase,
Fades rapidly, and by compression marred,
Contracts defilement not to be endured. 670
Hence chartered boroughs are such public
plagues;
And burghers, men immaculate perhaps
In all their private functions, once combined,
Become a loathsome body, only fit
For dissolution, hurtful to the main.
Hence merchants, unimpeachable of sin
Against the charities of domestic life,
Incorporated, seem at once to lose
Their nature, and, disclaiming all regard
For mercy and the common rights of
Of Tityrus, assembling, as he sang,
The rustic throng beneath his favourite
beech.
Then Milton had indeed a poet's charms:
New to my taste his Paradise surpassed 710
The struggling efforts of my boyish tongue
To speak its excellence; I danced for joy;
I marvelled much that, at so ripe an age
As twice seven years, his beauties had then
first
Engaged my wonder, and admiring still, 715
And still admiring, with regret supposed
The joy half lost, because not sooner found.
Thee too enamoured of the life I loved,
Pathetic in its praise, in its pursuit
Determined, and possessing it at last
With transports such as favoured lovers
feel,
I studied, prized, and wished that I had known,
Ingenious Cowley! and though now reclaimed
By modern lights from an erroneous taste,
I cannot but lament thy splendid wit
Entangled in the cobwebs of the schools,
I still revere thee, courtly though retired;
Though stretched at ease in Chertsey's silent
bowers,
Not unemployed, and finding rich amends
For a lost world in solitude and verse.
"T is born with all: the love of Nature's
works
Is an ingredient in the compound, man,
Infused at the creation of the kind.
And though the Almighty Maker has throughout
Discriminated each from each, by strokes 735
And touches of his hand, with so much art
Diversified, that two were never found
Twins at all points yet this obtains in all,
That all discern a beauty in his works,
And all can taste them: minds that have
been formed
740
And tutored with a relish more exact,
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