That seems to swing uncertain, and yet falls -
Full on the destined ear. Wide flies the chaff,
The rustling straw sends up a frequent mist
Of atoms, sparkling in the noon-day beam.
Come hither ye that press your beds of down,
And sleep not; see him sweating over his bread
Before he eats it.-Tis the primal curse,
But softened into mercy; made the pledge
Of cheerful days, and nights without a groan.
By ceaseless action all that is subsists.
Constant rotation of the unwearied wheel
That nature rides upon maintains her health,
Her beauty, her fertility. She dreads

An instant's pause, and lives but while she moves.
Its own revolvency upholds the world.

Winds froin all quarters agitate the air,
And fit the limpid element for use,

Else noxious: oceans, rivers, lakes, and streams,
All feel the freshening impulse, and are cleansed
By restless undulation: even the oak

Thrives by the rude concussion of the storm:
He seems indeed indignant, and to feel

The impression of the blast with proud disdain,
Frowning, as if in his unconscious arm

1.

He held the thunder: but the monarch owes
Eis firm stability to what he scorns,
Moe fixt below, the more disturbed above.
The law, by which all creatures else are bound,
Binds man the lord of all. Himself derives
No mean advantage from a kindred cause,

From strenuous toil his hours of sweetest ease.
The sedentary stretch their lazy length

When custom bids, but no refreshment find,
For none they need: the languid eye, the cheek
Deserted of its bloom, the flaccid, shrunk,
And withered muscle, and the vapid soul,
Reproach their owner with that love of rest,
To which he forfeits even the rest he loves.
Not such the alert and active. Measure life
By its true worth, the comforts it affords,
And their's alone seems worthy of the name.
Good health, and, its associate in the most,
Good temper; spirits prompt to undertake,
And not soon spent, though in an arduous task;
The powers of fancy and strong thought are their's;
Even age itself seems privileged in them,
With clear exemption from its own defects.
A sparkling eye beneath a wrinkled front.
The veteran shows, and, gracing a gray beard
With youthful smiles, descends toward the grave
Sprightly, and old almost without decay.

Like a coy maiden, ease, when courted most,
Farthest retires-an idol, at whose shrine
Who oftenest sacrifice are favoured least.
The love of Nature and the scenes she draws,
Is Nature's dictate. Strange! there should be found,
Who, self-imprisoned in their proud saloons,
Renounce the odours of the open field
For the unscented fictions of the loom;
Who, satisfied with only penciled scenes,

The inferior wonders of an artist's hand!
Lovely indeed the mimic works of art;
But Nature's works far lovelier. I admire,
None more admires the painter's magic skill,
Who shews me that which I shall never see,
Conveys a distant country into mine,

And throws Italian light on English wallsbi
But imitative strokes can do no more
Than please the eye-sweet Nature's every sense.
The air salubrious of her lofty hills,

The cheering fragrance of her dewy vales,
And music of her woods-no words of man
May rival these; these all bespeak a power
Peculiar, and exclusively her own.
Beneath the open sky she spreads the feast;
'Tis free to all-'tis every day renewed;
Who scorns it starves deservedly at home.
He does not scorn it, who, imprisoned long
In some unwholesome dungeon, and a prey
To sallow sickness, which the vapours, dank
And clammy, of his dark abode have bred,
Escapes at last to liberty and light

His cheek recovers soon its healthful hue;
His eye relumines its extinguished fires;

He walks, he leaps, he runs is winged with joy,
And riots in the sweets of every breeze,

He does not scorn it, who has long endured wor A fever's agonies, and fed on drugs,

Nor yet the mariner, his blood inflanted

With acrid salts; his very heart athirst
To gaze at nature in her green array,
Upon the ship's tall side he stands, possessed
With visions prompted by intense desire:
Fair fields appear below, such as he left
Far distant, such as he would die to find-
He seeks them headlong, and is seen no more.
The spleen is seldom felt where Flora reigns;
The lowering eye, the petulance, the frown,
And sullen sadness, that overshade, distort,
And mar, the face of beauty, when no cause
For such immeasurable woe appears,

These Flora banishes, and gives the fair
Sweet smiles, and bloom less transient than her own.
It is the constant revolution, stale

And tasteless, of the same repeated joys,
That palls and satiates, and makes languid life
A pedlar's pack, that bows the bearer down.
Health suffers, and the spirits ebb; 'the heart
Recoils from its own choice – at the full feast
Is famished finds no music in the song,
No smartness in the jest; and wonders why.
Yet thousands still desire to journey on,
Though halt, and weary of the path they tread.
The paralytic, who can hold her cards,

But cannot play

lay them, borrows a friend's hand
To deal and shuffle, to divide and sort
Her mingled suits and sequences; and sits,
Spectatress both and spectacle, a sad
And silent cypher, while her proxy plays.

Others are dragged into the crowded room
Between supporters; and, once seated, sit,
Through downright inability to rise,
Till the stout bearers lift the corpse again.
These speak a loud memento. Yet even these
Themselves love life, and cling to it, as he
That overhangs a torrent to a twig.
They love it, and yet loath it; fear to die,
Yet scorn the purposes for which they live.
Thenwherefore not renounce them? No-the dread,
The slavish dread of solitude, that breeds
Reflection and remorse, the fear of shame,
And their inveterate habits, all forbid.

Whom call we gay? That honour has been long
The boast of mere pretenders to the name..
The innocent are gay-the lark is gay,
That dries his feathers, saturate with dew,
Beneath the rosy cloud, while yet the beams
Of day-spring overshoot his humble nest.
The peasant too, a witness of his song,
Himself a songster, is as gay as he.

But save me from the gaiety of those,

Whose head-aches nail them to a noon-day bed;
And save me too from their's, whose haggard eyes
Flash desperation, and betray their pangs
For property stripped off by cruel chance;
From gaiety, that fills the bones with pain,
The mouth with blasphemy, the heart with woe.
The earth was made so various, that the mind
Of desultory man, studious of change,