As meet no more the wintry blast to bear,
And all the wild hostilities of air.
-That roof have I remember'd many a year;
It once gave refuge to a hunted deer-
Here, in those days, we found an aged pair;—
But Time untenants-Hah! what seest thou there?
'Horror!-By Heaven, extended on a bed
Of naked fern, two human creatures dead!
Embracing as alive!-ah, no!no life!
Cold, breathless!'-
'Tis the shepherd and his wife.
I knew the scene, and brought thee to behold
What speaks more strongly than the story told,
They died through want-
'By every power I swear, If the wretch treads the earth, or breathes the air, Through whose default of duty or design,
These victims fell, he dies-'
A swearing justice wants both grace and sense.
When thy good father held this wide domain,
The voice of sorrow never mourn'd in vain.
Sooth'd by his pity, by his bounty fed,
The sick found medicine, and the aged bread.
He left their interest to no parish care,
No bailiff urg'd his little empire there :
No village tyrant starv'd them, or oppress'd-
He learnt their wants, and he those wants redress'd.
E'en these, unhappy! who, beheld too late, Smote thy young heart with horror at their fate,
His bounty found, and destin'd here to keep
A small detachment of his mountain-sheep.
Still pleas'd to see them from the annual fair
The' unwritten history of their profits bear;
More nobly pleas'd those profits to restore,
And, if their fortune fail'd them, make it more.
When nature gave her precept to remove
His kindred spirit to the realms of love,
Afar their anguish from thy distant ear,
No arm to save, and no protection near,
Led by the lure of unaccounted gold,
Thy bailiff seiz'd their little flock, and sold.
Their want contending parishes survey'd,
And this disown'd, and that refus'd to aid;
A while, who should not succour them, they tried,
And in that while the wretched victims died.
'I'll scalp that bailiff-sacrifice'
To rave at mischief if the cause remain!
O days long lost to man in each degree,
The golden days of hospitality!
When liberal fortunes vied with liberal strife
To fill the noblest offices of life;
When wealth was Virtue's handmaid, and her gate
Gave a free refuge from the wrongs of fate;
The poor at hand their natural patrons saw,
And lawgivers were supplements of law!
Lost are those days, and Fashion's boundless sway
Has borne the guardian magistrate away.
Save in Augusta's streets, on Gallia's shore,
The rural patron is beheld no more.
No more the poor his kind protection share,
Unknown their wants, and unreceiv'd their pray'r.
Yet has that Fashion (long so light and vain)
Reform'd at last, and led the moral train?
Have her gay votaries nobler worth to boast
For Nature's love, for Nature's virtue lost?
No-fled from these, the sons of fortune find
What poor respect to wealth remains behind:
The mock regard alone of menial slaves,
The worship'd calves of their outwitting knaves!
Foregone the social, hospitable days,
When wide vales echoed with their owner's praise,
Of all that ancient consequence bereft,
What has the modern Man of Fashion left?—
Does he, perchance, to rural scenes repair,
And waste his sweetness' on the essenc'd air?
Ah! gently lave the feeble frame he brings,
Ye scouring seas, and ye sulphureous springs!
And thou, Brighthelmstone, where no cits annoy,
(All borne to Margate, in the Margate-hoy,)
Where, if the hasty creditor advance,
Lies the light skiff, and ever-bailing France,
Do thou defend him in the dog-day suns!
Secure in winter from the rage of duns!
While the grim catchpole, the grim porter swear,
One that he is, and one, he is not there,
The tortur'd usurer, as he murmurs by,
Eyes the Venetian blinds, and heaves a sigh.
O, from each title folly ever took,
Blood! Maccarone! Cicisbeo! Rook!
From each low passion, from each low resort,
The thieving alley, nay the righteous court;
From Betty's, Almack's, Arthur's, and the nest
Where Judah's ferrets earth with Charles unblest;
From these and all the garbage of the great,
At Honour's, Freedom's, Virtue's call-retreat!
Has the fair vale, where rest, conceal'd in flowers,
Lies in sweet ambush for thy careless hours,
The breeze, that, balmy fragrance to infuse,
Bathes its soft wing in aromatic dews;
The stream, to soothe thine ear, to cool thy breast,
That mildly murmurs from its crystal rest ;-
Have these less charms to win, less power to please,
Than haunts of rapine, harbours of disease?
Will no kind slumbers o'er thine eyelids creep,
Save where the sullen watchman growls at sleep?
Does morn no sweeter, purer breath diffuse,
Than steams through alleys from the lungs of Jews?
And is thy water, bent in putrid wood,
Bethesda-like, when troubled only good?
Is it thy passion Linley's voice to hear,
And has no mountain-lark detain'd thine ear?
Song marks alone the tribes of airy wing;
For, trust me, man was never meant to sing:
And all his mimic organs e'er exprest,
Was but an imitative howl at best.
Is it on Garrick's attitude you doat?
See on the pointed cliff yon lordly goat!
Like Lear's, his beard descends in graceful snow,
And wild he looks upon the world below.
Superior here the scene in every part!
Here reigns great Nature, and there little Art!
Here let thy life assume a nobler plan,
To Nature faithful, and the friend of man!
Unnumber'd objects ask thy honest care,
Beside the orphan's tear, the widow's pray'r :
Far as thy power can save, thy bounty bless,
Unnumber'd evils call for thy redress.
Seest thou afar yon solitary thorn,
Whose aged limbs the heath's wild winds have
While yet to cheer the homeward shepherd's eye,
A few seem straggling in the evening-sky!
Not many suns have hasten'd down the day,
Or blushing moons immers❜d in clouds their way,
Since there a scene, that stain'd their sacred light,
With horror stopp'd a felon in his flight;
A babe just born, that signs of like exprest,
Lay naked o'er the mother's lifeless breast.
The pitying robber, conscious that, pursued,
He had no time to waste, yet stood and view'd;
To the next cot the trembling infant bore,
And gave a part of what he stole before;
Nor known to him the wretches were, nor dear;
He felt as man, and dropp'd a human tear.
Far other treatment she who breathless lay,
Found from a viler animal of prey.
Worn with long toil on many a painful road,
That toil increas'd by Nature's growing load,
When evening brought the friendly hour of rest,
And all the mother throng'd about her breast,
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