That nature lives; that sight-refreshing green
Js still the livery she delights to wear,
Though sickly samples of the exuberant whole.
What are the casements lined with creeping herbs,
The prouder sashes fronted with a range
Of orange, myrtle, or the fragrant weed,
The Frenchman's* darling are they not all proofs
That man, immured in cities, still retains
His inborn inextinguishable thirst
Of rural scenes, compensating his loss
By supplemental shifts, the best he may?
The most unfurnished with the means of life,
And they that never pass their brick-wall bounds
To range the fields and treat their lungs with air,
Yet feel the burning instinct: over-head
Suspend their crazy boxes, planted thick,
And watered duly. There the pitcher stands
A fragment, and the spoutless tea pot there;
Sad witnesses how close-pent man regrets
The country, with what ardour he contrives
A peep at nature, when he can no more.
Hail, therefore, patroness of health and ease;
And contemplation, heart-consoling joys
And harmless pleasures, in the thronged abode
Of multitudes unknown; hail, rural life!
Address himself wbo will to the pursuit
Of honours, or emolument, or fame;
I shall not add myself to such a chase,
Thwart his attempts, or envy his success. Some must be great. Great offices will have Great talents. And God gives to every man The yirtue, temper, understanding, taste, That lifts him into life, and lets him fall Just in the niche, he was ordained to fill. To the deliverer of an injured land He gives a tongue to enlarge upon, an heart To feel, and courage to redress her wrongs; To monarchs dignity; to judges sense; To artists ingenuity and skill; To me an unambitious mind, content "In the low vale of life, that early felt "A wish for ease and leisure, and ere long, Found here that leisure and that ease I wished.
The Argument. A frosty morning.--The foddering of cattle. --The woodman
and his dog.–The poultry. Whimsical effects of a frost at a waterfall.–The empress of Russia's palace of ice. Amusements of monarchs.-War, one of them.-Wars, whence And whence monarchy. The evils of it. English and French loyalty contrasted.The Bastile, and a prisoner there.—Liberty the chief recommendation of this country.-Modern patriotism questionable, and wby. - The perishable nature of the best human institutions Spiritual liberty not perishable.— The slavish state of man by nature.coDeliver him, Deist, if you can.--Grace must do it. The respective merits of patriots and martyrs stated. Their different treatment.--Happy freedom of the man wbom grace inakes free. His relish of the works of Godo Address to the Creator.
'Tis morning; and the sun, with ruddy orb
Ascending, fires the horizon; while the clouds,
That crowd away before the driving wind,
Mare ardent as the disk emerges more,
Resemble most some city in a blaze,
Seen through the leafless wood. His slanting ray
Slides ineffectual down the snowy vale,
And tinging all with his own rosy hue,
From
every
berb and every spiry blade
Stretches a length of shadow o'er the field.
Mine, spindling into longitude immense,
In spite of gravity, and sage remark
That I myself am but a fleeting shade,
Provokes me to a sinilę. With eye askance
I view the muscular proportioned limb.
Transformed to a lean shank. The shapeless pais,
As they designed to mock me, at my side
Take step
for step; I near approach The cottage, walk along the plastered wall, Preposterous sight! the legs without the man. The verdure of the plain lies buried deep Beneath the dazzling deluge; and the bents, And coarser grass, upspearing o'er the rest, Of late unsightly and unseen, now shine Conspicuous, and in bright apparel clad, And fledged with icy feathers, nod superb. The cattle mourn in corners where the fence Screens them, and seem half petrified to sleep In unrecumbent sadness. There they wait Their wonted fodder; not like hungering man, Fretful if unsupplied; but silent, meek, And patient of the slow-paced swain's delay. He from the stack carves out the accustomed load. Deep-plunging, and again deep-plunging oft, His broad keen knife into the solid mass :
Smooth as a wall the upright remnant stands,
With such undeviating and even force
He severs it away: no needless care,
Lest storms should overset the leaning pile
Deciduous, or its own unbalanced weight.
Forth goes the woodman, leaving unconcerned
The cheerful haunts of man, to wield the axe
And drive the wedge in yonder forest drear,
From morn to eve his solitary task.
Shaggy, and lean, and shrewd, with pointed ears
And tail cropped short, half lurcher and half cur,
His dog attends him. Close behind his heel
Now
creeps he slow; and now, with many a frisk
Wide-scampering, snatches up the drifted snow
With ivory teeth, or ploughs it with his snout;
Then shakes his powdered coat, and barks for joy.
Headless of all his pranks, the sturdy churl
Moves' right toward the mark; nor stops for aught,
But now and then with pressure of his thumb
To adjust the fragrant charge of a short tube,
That fumes beneath his nose: the trailing cloud
Streams far behind him, scenting all the air.
Now from the roost, or from the neighbouring pale,
Where, diligent to catch the first faint gleam
Of smiling day, they gossipped side by side,
Come trooping at the housewife's well-known call
The feathered tribes domestic, Half on wing
And half on foot, they brush the fleecy food,
Conscious and fearful of too deep a plunge.
The sparrows peep, and quit the sheltering eaves
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