That lean hard-handed poverty inflicts,

The hope of better things, the chance to win, The wish to shine, the thirst to be amused, That at the found of winter's hoary wing Unpeople all our counties of fuch herds

Of fluttering, loitering, cringing, begging, loose And wanton vagrants, as make London, vaft And boundless as it is, a crowded coop.

Oh thou, refort and mart of all the earth, Chequered with all complexions of mankind, And fpotted with all crimes; in whom I fee Much that I love, and more that I admire, And all that I abhor; thou freckled fair, That pleaseft and yet shockeft me, I can laugh And I can weep, can hope, and can defpond, Feel wrath and pity, when I think on thee! Ten righteous would have faved a city once, And thou hast many righteous.-Well for theeThat falt preferves thee; more corrupted elfe, And therefore more obnoxious, at this hour Than Sodom in her day had power to be,

For whom God heard his Abraham plead in vain.

THE TASK.

BOOK IV.

F S

ARGUMENT OF THE FOURTH BOOK.

The post comes in.-The newspaper is read-The world contemplated at a distance.—Address to Winter. The rural amusements of a winter evening compared with the fashionable ones.Address to evening. A brown study-Fall of snow in the evening. The waggone.—A poor family-piece.— The rural thief-Public houses.-The multitude of them censured.-The farmer's daughter: what she was—what she is.—The simplicity of country manners almost lost.-Causes of the change.-Desertion of the country by the rich.-Neglect of magistrates. 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 wearifome 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 fpattered 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 inn;

And, having dropped the expected bag, pass 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, epifties wet
With tears, that trickled down the writer's cheeks
Faft as the periods from his fluent quill,

Or charged with amorous fighs of abfent fwains,
Or nymphs refponfive, equally affect

His horfe and him, unconfcious 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 fmile 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.

Now ftir the fire, and close the thutters faft, Let fall the curtains, wheel the sofa round, And while the bubbling and loud biffing urn