THE TASK.

BOOK IV.

ARGUMENT OF THE FOURTH BOOK.

The poft comes in.-The newspaper is read.—The world contemplated at a diftance.-Addrefs to Winter. The rural amusements of a winter evening compared with the fashionable ones.Addrefs to evening.—A brown ftudy.-Fall of Snow in the evening.-The waggoner - poor family-piece.The rural thief-Public houfes -The multitude of them cenfured.-The farmer's daughter: what She was what he is.-The fimplicity of country manners almoft loft.-Caufes of the change.-DeSertion of the country by the rich.-Neglect of magiftrates.-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.

THE TASK.

BOOK IV.

THE WINTER EVENING.

HARK! 'tis the twanging horn o'er yonder bridge,
That with its wearisome but needful length
Beftrides the wintry flood, in which the moon
Sees her unwrinkled face reflected bright;-
He comes, the herald of a noisy world,

With spattered boots, ftrapped 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 deftined iun;

And having dropped the expected bag, pafs on.
He whistles as he goes, light-hearted wretch,

Cold and yet cheerful; meffenger of grief
Perhaps to thousands, and of joy to fome;
To him indifferent whether grief or joy.
Houses in afhes, and the fall of stocks,
Births, deaths, and marriages, epiftles wet
With tears, that trickled down the writer's cheeks
Fast as the periods from his fluent quill,

Or charged with amorous fighs of absent swains,
Or nymphs refponfive, equally affect

His horse and him, unconscious of them all.
But oh the important budget! ushered in
With fuch heart-fhaking mufic, who can fay
What are its tidings? have our troops awaked?
Or do they ftill, as if with opium drugged,
Snore to the murmurs of the Atlantic wave?
Is India free and does the wear her plumed
And jewelled turban with a smile of peace,
Or do we grind her ftill? The grand debate,
The popular harangue, the tart reply,

The logic and the wisdom, and the wit,
And the loud laugh-I long to know them all;
I burn to fet the imprisoned wranglers free,
And give them voice and utterance once again.