A vagabond and useless tribe there eat GYPSY ARTS; SLOTH AND JOLLITY. Great skill have they in palmistry, and more To conjure clean away the gold they touch, Conveying worthless dross into its place; Loud when they beg, dumb only when they steal. Strange that a creature rational, and cast In human mould, should brutalize by choice His nature; and, though capable of arts, By which the world might profit, and himself, Self-banished from society, prefer Such squalid sloth to honorable toil! Yet even these, though feigning sickness oft They swathe the forehead, drag the limping limb, And vex their flesh with artificial sores, Can change their whine into a mirthful note, When safe occasion offers; and with dance, And music of the bladder and the bag, Beguile their woes, and make the woods resound. Such health and gayety of heart enjoy The houseless rovers of the sylvan world; And, breathing wholesome air, and wandering much, Need other physic none to heal th' effects Of loathsome diet, penury, and cold. ADVANTAGES OF CIVILIZATION OVER BARBARISM. — THE INDIANS, PATAGONIANS. ISLANDERS. [learn, Blest he, though undistinguished from the crowd By wealth or dignity, who dwells secure, Where man, by nature fierce, has laid aside His fierceness; having learned, though slow to The manners and the arts of civil life. His wants indeed are many; but supply Is obvious, placed within the easy reach Of temperate wishes and industrious hands. Here virtue thrives as in her proper soil; Not rude and surly, and beset with thorns, And terrible to sight, as when she springs (If e'er she spring spontaneous), in remote And barbarous climes, where violence prevails, And strength is lord of all; but gentle, kind, By culture tamed, by liberty refreshed, And all her fruits by radiant truth matured. War and the chase engross the savage whole; War followed for revenge, or to supplant The envied tenants of some happier spot: The chase for sustenance, precarious trust! His hard condition with severe constraint Binds all his faculties, forbids all growth Of wisdom, proves a school, in which he learns Sly circumvention, unrelenting hate, OMAI, THE ISLANDER. 1 But far beyond the rest, and with most cause, Or else vain glory, prompted us to draw The gifts of Providence, and squander life. HOMESICK LONGINGS OF THE ISLANDER. TRADE AND PHI LANTHROPY. I see thee weep, and thine are honest tears, A patriot's for his country; thou art sad At thought of her forlorn and abject state, From which no power of thine can raise her up. Thus fancy paints thee, and though apt to err, Perhaps errs little when she paints thee thus. She tells me, too, that duly every morn Thou climbest the mountain top, with eager eye Exploring far and wide the watery waste, For sight of ship from England. Every speck Seen in the dim horizon turns thee pale With conflict of contending hopes and fears. 1 Omai. But comes at last the dull and dusky eve, To tempt us in thy country. Doing good, We travel far, 't is true, but not for naught; CITIES. THEIR DISADVANTAGES AS TO VIRTUE. — LUXURY ; VICE. But though true worth and virtue in the mild Thrive most, and may perhaps thrive only there, Or seen with least reproach; and virtue, taught LONDON ITS VICES - YET A NURSE OF THE ARTS.PAINTING; SCULPTURE; ENGRAVING. I do confess them nurseries of the arts, The powers of sculpture, but the style as much; LONDON THE HOME OF SCIENCE, COMMERCE, WEALTH. Increasing London? Babylon of old LONDON. CERTAIN REFORMS RECOMMENDED TO HER. PRE- She has her praise. Now mark a spot or two, On petty robbers, and indulges life That thieves at home must hang; but he that puts And knees and hassocks are well-nigh divorced. GOD MADE THE COUNTRY, MAN THE TOWN. RURAL LIFE PROMISES MOST HEALTH AND VIRTUE, IDLENESS. - SIMPLE DESIRES AND JOYS OF THE COUNTRY. FOREBODINGS. God made the country, and man made the town. What wonder, then, that health and virtue, gifts That can alone make sweet the bitter draught That life holds out to all, should most abound And least be threatened in the fields and groves? Possess ye, therefore, ye who, borne about In chariots and sedans, know no fatigue But that of idleness, and taste no scenes But such as art contrives, possess ye still Your element; there only can ye shine; There only minds like yours can do no harm. Our groves were planted to console at noon The pensive wanderer in their shades. At eve The moonbeam, sliding softly in between The sleeping leaves, is all the light they wish, Birds warbling all the music. We can spare The splendor of your lamps: they but eclipse Our softer satellite. Your songs confound Our more harmonious notes: the thrush departs Scared, and th' offended nightingale is mute. There is a public mischief in your mirth; It plagues your country. Folly such as yours, Graced with a sword, and worthier of a fan, Has made, what enemies could ne'er have done, Our arch of empire, steadfast but for you, A mutilated structure, soon to fall. Th' admiring goatherd then his judgment spake : Sweet is thy mouth, and sweetest tones awake From thy lips, Daphnis! I would rather hear Thee sing than suck the honey-comb, I swear. Take thou the pipe, for thine the winning song. If thou wilt teach me here, my goats among, Some song, I will that hornless goat bestow, That ever fills the pail to overflow.' Glad Daphnis clapped his hands, and on the lawn He leaped, as round her mother leaps the fawn. But sad Menalcas fed a smouldering gloom, As grieves a girl betrothed to unknown groom. And first in song was Daphnis from that time, And wived a Naiad in his blooming prime. PARNELL'S "HEALTH." AN ECLOGUE. Now early shepherds o'er the meadow pass, And print long footsteps in the glittering grass; The cows neglectful of their pasture stand, By turns obsequious to the milker's hand. When Damon softly trod the shaven lawn; Damon, a youth from city cares withdrawn ; Long was the pleasing walk he wandered through, A covered arbor closed the distant view; [throng There rests the youth, and, while the feathered Raise their wild music, thus contrives a song. Here, wafted o'er by mild etesian air, Thou country goddess, beauteous health! repair, Here let my breast through quivering trees inhale Thy rosy blessings with the morning gale. What are the fields, or flowers, or all I see? Ah! tasteless all, if not enjoyed with thee. Joy to my soul! I feel the goddess nigh, The face of nature cheers as well as I ; O'er the flat green refreshing breezes run, The smiling daisies blow beneath the sun, Come, country goddess, come, nor thou suffice, I mount the courser, call the deep-mouthed hounds, I lead where stags through tangled thickets tread, Crabbe's "Village." BOOK I. ARGUMENT. The subject proposed. Remarks upon pastoral poetry. A tract of country near the coast described. An impoverished borough. Smugglers and their assistants. Rude manners of the inhabitants. Ruinous effects of a high tide. The village life more generally considered; evils of it. The youthful laborer. The old man; his soliloquy. The parish workhouse. Its inhabitants. The sick poor. Their apothecary. The dying pauper. The village priest. THE SUBJECT STATED; POVERTY AS IT IS. THE village life, and every care that reigns O'er youthful peasants and declining swains; What labor yields, and what, that labor past, Age, in its hour of languor, finds at last; What form the real picture of the poor, Demand a song- the Muse can give no more. MODERN PASTORALS RIDICULED. — VIRGIL'S ECLOGUES.— PIPES, PLOUGHS, POETRY. Fled are those times, when, in harmonious strains, The rustic poet praised his native plains; No shepherds now, in smooth alternate verse, Their country's beauty or their nymphs' rehearse; Yet still for these we frame the tender strain, Still in our lays fond Corydons complain, And shepherds' boys their amorous pains reveal, The only pains, alas! they never feel. On Mincio's banks, in Cæsar's bounteous reign, If Tityrus found the golden age again, Must sleepy bards the flattering dream prolong, From this chief cause these idle praises spring, TRUE SYMPATHY WITH THE LABORER. — RHYME AND REASON OF POVERTY. I grant indeed that fields and flocks have charms, For him that gazes or for him that farms; But when amid such pleasing scenes I trace The poor, laborious natives of the place, And see the midday sun, with fervid ray, On their bare heads and dewy temples play; While some, with feebler hands and fainter hearts, Deplore their fortune, yet sustain their parts, — Then shall I dare these real ills to hide, In tinsel trappings of poetic pride? No; cast by fortune on a frowning coast, Which neither groves nor happy valleys boast; Where other cares than those the muse relates, And other shepherds dwell with other mates; By such examples taught, I paint the cot, As truth will paint it, and as bards will not: Nor you, ye poor, of lettered scorn complain, То you the smoothest song is smooth in vain ; O'ercome by labor and bowed down by time, Feel you the barren flattery of a rhyme? Can poets soothe you, when you pine for bread, By winding myrtles round your ruined shed? Can their light tales your weighty griefs o'erpower, Or glad with airy mirth the toilsome hour? HOMELY PICTURE OF A STERILE TRACT OF COUNTRY. — THE HEATH. SAND, WEEDS, THISTLES, POPPY, BUGLOSS, MALLOW, CHARLOCK, TARES. SIMILE OF THE GARISH PROSTITUTE. Lo! where the heath, with withering brake grown o'er, [poor; Lends the light turf that warms the neighboring From thence a length of burning sand appears, Where the thin harvest waves its withered ears; Rank weeds, that every art and care defy, Reign o'er the land, and rob the blighted rye : There thistles stretch their prickly arms afar, And to the ragged infant threaten war; There poppies, nodding, mock the hope of toil, There the blue bugloss paints the sterile soil; Hardy and high, above the slender sheaf, The slimy mallow waves her silky leaf; O'er the young shoot the charlock throws a shade, And clasping tares cling round the sickly blade; With mingled tints the rocky coasts abound, And a sad splendor vainly shines around. So looks the nymph whom wretched arts adorn, Betrayed by man, then left for man to scorn; Whose cheek in vain assumes the mimic rose, While her sad eyes the troubled breast disclose ; |