Earth's universal face, deep hid, and chill,
Is one wild dazzling waste, that buries wide
The works of Man. Drooping the labourer-ox 240
Stands covered o'er with snow, and then demands
The fruit of all his toil. The fowls of heaven,
Tam'd by the cruel season, crowd around
The winnowing store, and claim the little boon
Which Providence assigns them. One alone, 245
The red-breast, sacred to the household gods,
Wisely regardful of th' embroiling sky,
In joyless fields and thorny thickets leaves
His shivering mates, and pays to trusted Man
His annual vifit. Half-afraid, he first
Against the window beats, then, brisk, alights
On the warm hearth; then, hopping o'er the floor,
Eyes all the smiling family askance,
And pecks, and starts, and wonders where he is!
Till more familiar grown, the table-crumbs
Attract his flender feet. The foodless wilds
Pour forth their brown inhabitants. The hare,
Tho' timorous of heart, and hard befet
By death in various forms, dark snares, and dogs,
And more unpitying men, the garden seeks, 260
Urg'd on by fearless Want. The bleating kind
Eye the bleak heaven, and next the glistening earth,
With looks of dumb defpair; then, sad dispers'd,
Dig for the withered herb thro' heaps of snow.
Now, Shepherds! to your helpless charge be kind;
Baffle the raging year, and fill their penns
With food at will; lodge them below the storm,
And watch them strict; for from the bellowing East,
In this dire season, oft' the whirlwind's wing
Sweeps up the burthen of whole wintry plains 270
At one wide waft, and o'er the hapless flocks,
Hid in the hollow of two neighbouring hills,
The billowy tempest whelms, till, upward urg'd,
The valley to a shining mountain swells.
Tipt with a wreath high-curling in the sky.
As thus the snows arife, and foul, and fierce, All Winter drives along the darkened air, In his own loose revolving fields the swain Disastered stands, fees other hills afcend Of unknown joyless brow, and other scenes 280 Of horrid profpect, shag the trackless plain;
Nor finds the river, nor the forest, hid
Beneath the formless wild; but wanders on
From hill to dale, still more and more astray,
Impatient flouncing thro' the drifted heaps,
Stung with the thoughts of home; the thoughts of home
Rush on his nerves, and call their vigour forth
In many a vain attempt, How finks his foul!
What black despair, what horror, fills his heart!
When for the dusky spot, which Fancy feign'd 290
His tufted cottage rising thro' the now,
He meets the roughness of the middle waste,
Far from the track and blest abode of Man;
While round him night resistless closes fast,
And every tempest, howling o'er his head,
Renders the savage wilderness more wild.
Then throng the busy shapes into his mind,
Of covered pits, unfathomably deep,
A dire descent! beyond the power of froft,
Of faithless bogs; of precipices huge,
Smooth'd up with snow; and, what island, unknown,
What water of the still unfrozen spring,
In the loofe marsh or folitary lake,
Where the fresh fountain from the bottom boils.
These check his fearful steps, and down he sinks 305
Beneath the shelter of the shapeless drift,
Thinking o'er all the bitterness of death,
Mix'd with the tender anguish Nature shoots
Thro' the wrung bosom of the dying man,
His wife, his children, and his friends unseen. 310
In vain for him th' officious wife prepares
The fire fair-blazing, and the vestment warm;
In vain his little children, peeping out
Into the mingling storm, demand their fire
With tears of artless innocence. Alas!
Nor wife, nor children, more shall he behold,
Nor friends, nor sacred home. On every nerve
The deadly Winter seizes, shuts up senfe,.
And, o'er his inmost vitals creeping cold,
Lays him along the snows, a stiffened corse,
Stretch'd out, and bleaching in the northern blast.
Ah! little think the gay licentious proud, Whom pleasure, power, and affluence furround; They, who their thoughtless hours in giddy mirth, And wanton, often cruel riot, waste; Ah! little think they, while they dance along, How many feel, this very moment, death,
And all the sad variety of pain:
How many fink in the devouring flood,
Or more devouring flame! how many bleed, 330. By shameful variance betwixt man and man!
How many pine in want, and dungeon glooms,
Shut from the common air, and common use
Of their own limbs! how many drink the cup
Of baleful grief, or eat the bitter bread
Of mifery! fore pierc'd by wintry winds,
How many shrink into the fordid hut
Of cheerlefs Poverty! how many shake
With all the fiercer tortures of the mind,
Unbounded paflion, madness, guilt, remorse, 340
Whence, tumbled headlong from the height of life,
They furnish matter for the Tragic Muse!
Even in the vale, where Wisdom loves to dwell,
With Friendship, Peace, and Contemplation join'd,
How many, rack'd with honest passions, droop 345
In deep retir'd distress! how many stand
Around the deathbed of their dearest friends,
And point the parting anguish! Thought fond Man
Of thefe, and all the thousand nameless ills
That one inceffant struggle render life,
One scene of toil, of fuffering, and of fate,
Vice in his high career would stand appall'd,
And heedless rambling Impulse learn to think';
The confcious heart of Charity would warm,
And her wide wish Benevolence dilate;
The social tear would rife, the focial figh,
And into clear perfection, gradual bliss,
Refining still, the social paffions work.
And here can I forget the generous band
Who, touch'd with human woe, redressive Tearch'd
Into the horrors of the gloomy jail?
Unpitied, and unheard, where Misery moans,
Where Sickness pines, where Thirst and Hunger burn,
And poor Misfortune feels the lash of Vice.
While in the land of Liberty, the land
Whose every street and public meeting glow
With open Freedom, little tyrants rag'd,
Snatch'd the lean morsel from the starving mouth,
Tore from cold wintry limbs the tattered weed,
Even robb'd them of the laft of comforts, sleep, 370
The free-born Briton to the dungeon chain'd,
Or, as the luft of cruelty prevail'd,
At pleasure mark'd him with inglorious ftripes,
And crush'd out lives, by secret barbarous ways,
That for their country would have toil'd or bled. 375
O great design! if executed well,
• The Jail Committee, in the year 1729.
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