Acknowledged, others may admire it too. I therefore recommend, though at the risk Of popular disgust, yet boldly still,
The cause of piety and sacred truth
And virtue, and those scenes which God ordair.ed Should best secure them and promote them most; Scenes that I love, and with regret perceive Forsaken or through folly not enjoyed.
Pure is the nymph, though liberal of her smiles, And chaste, though unconfined, whom I extol; Not as the Prince in Sushan, when he called Vain-glorious of her charms his Vashti forth To grace the full pavilion. His design Was but to boast his own peculiar good, Which all might view with envy, none partake. My charmer is not mine alone; my sweets And she that sweetens all my bitters too, Nature, enchanting nature, in whose form And lineaments divine I trace a hand That errs not, and find raptures still renewed, Is free to all men, universal prize.
Strange that so fair a creature should yet want Admirers, and be destined to divide
With meaner objects, even the few she finds. Stript of her ornaments, her leaves and flowers, She loses all her influence. Cities then Attract us, and neglected nature pines Abandoned, as unworthy of our love.
But are not wholesome airs, though unperfumed By roses, and clear suns though scarcely felt,
And groves if unharmonious, yet secure
From clamour, and whose very silence charms, To be preferred to smoke, to the eclipse
That metropolitan volcanoes make,
Whose Stygian throats breathe darkness all day long, And to the stir of commerce, driving slow,
And thundering loud, with his ten thousand wheels? They would be, were not madness in the head And folly in the heart; were England now What England was, plain, hospitable, kind, And undebauched. But we have bid farewell To all the virtues of those better days
And all their honest pleasures. Mansions once Knew their own masters, and laborious hinds That had survived the father, served the son. Now the legitimate and rightful lord Is but a transient guest, newly arrived And soon to be supplanted. He that saw His patrimonial timber cast its leaf,
Sells the last scantling, and transfers the price To some shrewd sharper, ere it buds again. Estates are landscapes, gazed upon awhile,
Then advertised, and auctioneered away.
The country starves, and they that feed the o'ercharged And surfeited lewd town with her fair dues, By a just judgment strip and starve themselves. The wings that wast our riches out of sight Grow on the gamester's elbows, and the alert And nimble motion of those restless joints That never tire, soon fans them all away. Improvement too, the idol of the age, Is fed with many a victim. Lo! he comes,- The omnipotent magician, Brown appears. Down falls the venerable pile, the abode Of our forefathers, a grave whiskered race, But tasteless. Springs a palace in its stead, But in a distant spot; where more exposed It may enjoy the advantage of the north And agueish east, till time shall have transformed Those naked acres to a sheltering grove. He speaks. The lake in front becomes a lawn, Woods vanish, hills subside, and valleys rise, And streams, as if created for his use, Pursue the track of his directing wand, Sinuous or straight, now rapid and now slow, Now murmuring soft, now roaring in cascades, Even as he bids. The enraptured owner smiles. 'Tis finished! And yet finished as it seems, Still wants a grace, the loveliest it could show, A mine to satisfy the enormous cost.
Drained to the last poor item of his wealth,
He sighs, departs, and leaves the accomplished plan That he has touched, retouched, many a long day Laboured, and many a night pursued in dreams, Just when it meets his hopes, and proves the heaven He wanted, for a wealthier to enjoy.
And now perhaps the glorious hour is come, When having no stake left, no pledge to endear Her interests, or that gives her sacred cause
A moment's operation on his love,
He burns with most intense and flagrant zeal To serve his country. Ministerial grace Deals him out money from the public chest ; Or if that mine be shut, some private purse Supplies his need with an usurious loan, To be refunded duly, when his vote, Well-managed, shall have earned its worthy price, Oh, innocent compared with arts like these, Crape and cocked pistol and the whistling ball Sent through the traveller's temples! He that finds One drop of heaven's sweet mercy in his cup, Can dig, beg, rot, and perish well-content, So he may wrap himself in honest rags At his last gasp; but could not for a world
"Placed at some vacant corner of the board, Learn every trick, and soon play all the
Half so refined or so sincere as ours.
Cards were superfluous here, with all the tricks That idleness has ever yet contrived To fill the void of an unfurnished brain, To palliate dulness and give time a shove. Time as he passes us, has a dove's wing, Unsoiled and swift and of a silken sound. But the world's time, is time in masquerade. Theirs, should I paint him, has his pinions fledged With motley plumes, and where the peacock shows His azure eyes, is tinctured black and red With spots quadrangular of diamond form, Ensanguined hearts, clubs typical of strife, And spades, the emblem of untimely graves. What should be, and what was an hour-glass once Becomes a dice-box, and a billiard mast Well does the work of his destructive scythe.
Thus decked he charms a world whom fashion blinds To his true worth, most pleased when idle most, Whose only happy are their wasted hours. Even misses, at whose age their mothers wore The back-string and the bib, assume the dress Of womanhood, sit pupils in the school Of card-devoted time, and night by night Placed at some vacant corner of the board, Learn every trick, and soon play all the game. But truce with censure. Roving as I rove, Where shall I find an end, or how proceed? As he that travels far, oft turns aside To view some rugged rock or mouldering tower, Which seen delights him not; then coming home, Describes and prints it, that the world may know How far he went for what was nothing worth; So I with brush in hand and pallet spread With colours mixed for a far different use, Paint cards and dolls, and every idle thing That fancy finds in her excursive flights.
Come evening once again, season of peace, Return sweet evening, and continue long ! Methinks I see thee in the streaky west, With matron-step slow-moving, while the night Treads on thy sweeping train; one hand employed In letting fall the curtain of repose
On bird and beast, the other charged for man With sweet oblivion of the cares of day; Not sumptuously adorned, nor needing aid Like homely-featured night, of clustering gems, A star or two just twinkling on thy brow Suffices thee; save that the moon is thine No less than hers, not worn indeed on high With ostentatious pageantry, but set With modest grandeur in thy purple zone,
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