Receives the morsel-flesh obscene of dog, From his accustomed perch. Hard-faring race! Which, kindled with dry leaves, just saves unquenched The spark of life. The sportive wind blows wide Such squalid sloth to honourable toil! Yet even these, though feigning sickness oft They swathe the forehead, drag the limping limb, And vex their flesh with artificial sores, Can change their whine into a mirthful note, When safe occasion offers; and with dance Beguile their woes, and make the woods resound. The houseless rovers of the sylvan world; And, breathing wholesome air, and wandering much, Need other physic none to heal the effects Of loathsome diet, penury, and cold. Blest he, though undistinguished from the crowd By wealth or dignity, who dwells secure, Where man, by nature fierce, has laid aside His fierceness, having learnt, though slow to learn, The manners and the arts of civil life. His wants indeed are many; but supply Is obvious, placed within the easy reach Of temperate wishes and industrious hands, Here virtue thrives as in her proper soil; Not rude and surly, and beset with thorns, And terrible to sight, as when she springs (If ever she spring spontaneous) in remote And barbarous climes, where violence prevails, And strength is lord of all; but gentle, kind, By culture tamed, by liberty refreshed, And all her fruits by radiant truth matured. War and the chase engross the savage whole; War followed for revenge, or to supplant The envied tenants of some happier spot: The chase for sustenance, precarious trust! His hard condition with severe constraint Binds all his faculties, forbids all growth Of wisdom, proves a school, in which he learns, Sly circumvention, unrelenting hate, Mean self-attachment, and scarce aught beside. And thus the rangers of the western world, Towards the Antarctic. Even the favoured isles Or ploughed perhaps by British bark again. * Or else vain glory, prompted us to draw * Omai. |