Substantial happiness for transient joy.

Scenes formed for contemplation, and to nurse
The growing seeds of wisdom; that suggest,
By every pleasing image they present,
Reflections such as meliorate the heart,
Compose the passions, and exalt the mind;
Scenes such as these 'tis his supreme delight
To fill with riot, and defile with blood.
Should some contagion, kind to the poor brutes
We persecute, annihilate the tribes,

That draw the sportsman over hill and dale
Fearless and rapt away from all his cares;
Should never game-fowl hatch her eggs again,
Nor baited hook deceive the fish's eye;

Could pageantry and dance, and feast and song,
Be quelled in all our summer-months' retreat;
How many self-deluded nymphs and swains,
Who dream they have a taste for fields and groves,
Would find them hideous nurseries of the spleen,
And crowd the roads, impatient for the town!
They love the country, and none else, who seek
For their own sake its silence and its shade.
Delights which who would leave, that has a heart
Susceptible of pity, or a mind

Cultured and capable of sober thought,

For all the savage din of the swift pack,

And clamours of the field?-Detested sport,

That owes its pleasures to another's pain;
That feeds upon the sobs and dying shrieks
Of harmless nature, dumb, but yet endued
With eloquence, that agonies inspire,
Of silent tears and heart-distending sighs?
Vain tears, alas, and sighs, that never find
A corresponding tone in jovial souls!
Well-one at least is safe.

One sheltered hare

Has never heard the sanguinary yell
Of cruel man, exulting in her woes.
Innocent partner of my peaceful home,

Whom ten long years' experience of my care
Has made at last familiar; she has lost
Much of her vigilant instinctive dread,
Not needful here, beneath a roof like mine.
Yes-thou mayest eat thy bread, and lick the hand
That feeds thee; thou mayest frolic on the floor
At evening, and at night retire secure

To thy straw couch, and slumber unalarmed;
For I have gained thy confidence, have pledged
All that is human in me to protect
Thine unsuspecting gratitude and love.
If I survive thee I will dig thy grave;
And, when I place thee in it, sighing say,
I knew at least one hare that had a friend.

How various his employments, whom the world Calls idle; and who justly in return

Esteems that busy world an idler too.

Friends, books, a garden, and perhaps his pen,

Delightful industry enjoyed at home,

And nature in her cultivated trim

Dressed to his taste, inviting him abroad-
Can he want occupation who has these?
Will he be idle who has much to enjoy ?
Me therefore studious of laborious ease,
Not slothful, happy to deceive the time,
Not waste it, and aware that human life
Is but a loan to be repaid with use,

When He shall call his debtors to account,
From whom are all our blessings; business finds
Even here: while sedulous I seek to improve,
At least neglect not, or leave unemployed,
The mind he gave me; driving it, though slack
Too oft, and much impeded in its work
By causes not to be divulged in vain,
To its just point-the service of mankind.
He, that attends to his interior self,

That has a heart, and keeps it; has a mind
That hungers, and supplies it; and who seeks
A social, not a dissipated life,

Has business; feels himself engaged to achieve
No unimportant, though a silent, task.

A life all turbulence and noise may seem
To him that leads it wise, and to be praised;