Admirers, and be destined to divide With meaner objects e'en the few she finds! Stripped 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 snoke, to the eclipse, That metropolitan volcanos make, Llong; Whose Stygian throats breathe darkness all day 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 wa's, 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, Who 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'er
charged And surfeited lewd town with her fair dues, By a just judgment strip and starve themselves. The wings, that waft 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 aguish cast, till time shall bave transformed Those naked acres to a sheltering grove. He speaks. The lake in front becomes a lawn; Woods vanish, hills subside, and valies 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 cascadesma E’en 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
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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 interest, 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 chests 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 Fish up his dirty and dependent bread From pools and ditches of the commonwealth, Sordid and sickening at his own success.
Ambition, avarice, penury incurred By endless riot, vanity, the last Of pleasure and variety, dispatch, As duly as the swallows disappear, Theworld of wandering knights and squires totown. London ingulpbs them all! The shark is there, And the shark's prey; the spendthrift and the leech,
That sucks him. There the sycophant, and he Who, with bare-headed and obsequious bows, Begs a warm office, doomed to a cold jail And groat per diem, if his patron frown. The levee swarms, as if in golden pomp Were charactered on every statesman's door, “BATTERED AND BANKRUPT FORTUNES MENDED These are the charms, that sully and eclipse (nere." The charms of nature. 'Tis the cruel gripe, That lean hard-handed poverty inflicts, The hope of better things, the chance to win, The wish to sbine; the thirst to be amused, That at the sound of winter's hoary wing Unpeople all our counties of such herds Of fluttering, loitering, cringing, begging, loose And wanton vagrants, as make London, vast And boundless as it is, a crowded coop. Oh thou, resort, and mart of all the earth, Chequered with all complexions of mankind, And spotted with all crimes; in whom I see Much that I love, and more that I admire, And all that I abbor; thou freckled fair, That pleasest and
yet shockest me,
I
can laugh And I can weep, can hope, and can despond, Feel wrath and pity, when I think on thee! Ten righteous would have saved a city once, And thou hast many righteous. Well for thee That salt preserves thee; more corrupted else, 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 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 waggoner.- 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 prin. cipally 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.
HARK! 'tis the twanging horn o'er yonder bridge, That with its wearisome but peedful length Bestrides the wintry flood, in which the moon Sees her ynwrinkled face reflected bright; He comes, the herald of a noisy world, With spattered boots, strapped waist, and frozen
locks; News from all pations lumbering at his back.
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