Ne were the goodly exercises spared

That brace the nerves, or make the limbs alert,

And mix elastic force with firmness hard:

Was never knight on ground mote be with him compared.

6 Sometimes, with early morn, he mounted gay
The hunter steed, exulting o'er the dale,
And drew the roseate breath of orient day;
Sometimes, retiring to the secret vale,

Yclad in steel, and bright with burnish'd mail,
He strain'd the bow, or toss'd the sounding spear,
Or, darting on the goal, outstripp'd the gale,

Or wheel'd the chariot in its mid career,

Or strenuous wrestled hard with many a tough compeer.

7 At other times he pried through Nature's store,
Whate'er she in th' ethereal round contains,
Whate'er she hides beneath her verdant floor,
The vegetable and the mineral reigns;

Or else he scann'd the globe, those small domains
Where restless mortals such a turmoil keep,

Its seas, its floods, its mountains, and its plains;
But more he search'd the mind, and roused from sleep
Those moral seeds whence we heroic actions reap.

8 Nor would he scorn to stoop from high pursuits
Of heavenly truth, and practise what she taught:
Vain is the tree of knowledge without fruits!
Sometimes in hand the spade or plough he caught,
Forth calling all with which boon earth is fraught;
Sometimes he plied the strong mechanic tool,
Or rear'd the fabric from the finest draught;
And oft he put himself to Neptune's school,

Fighting with winds and waves on the vex'd ocean pool.

9 To solace then these rougher toils, he tried
To touch the kindling canvas into life;
With Nature his creating pencil vied,
With Nature joyous at the mimic strife:

THE KNIGHT OF INDUSTRY.

8

Or to such shapes as graced Pygmalion's wife
He hew'd the marble; or, with varied fire,
He roused the trumpet and the martial fife,
Or bade the lute sweet tenderness inspire,
Or verses framed that well might wake Apollo's lyre.

9

10 Accomplish'd thus, he from the woods issúed,
Full of great aims, and bent on bold emprise ;
The work which long he in his breast had brew'd,
Now to perform he ardent did devise;

To wit, a barbarous world to civilise.

Earth was still then a boundless forest wild;
Nought to be seen but savage wood, and skies;
No cities nourish'd arts, no culture smiled,
No government, no laws, no gentle manners mild.

11 A rugged wight, the worst of brutes, was man ;
On his own wretched kind he ruthless prey'd ;
The strongest still the weakest overran ;
In every country mighty robbers sway'd,
And guile and ruffian force were all their trade:
Life was a scene of rapine, want, and woe;
Which this brave knight, in noble anger, made
To swear he would the rascal rout o'erthrow,
For, by the powers divine, it should no more be so.

12 It would exceed the purport of my song

To say how this best Sun, from orient climes,
Came beaming life and beauty all along,
Before him chasing indolence and crimes.
Still as he pass'd, the nations he sublimes,
And calls forth arts and virtues with his ray:

Then Egypt, Greece, and Rome their golden times,

Successive, had; but now in ruins gray

They lie, to slavish sloth and tyranny a prey.

421

Pygmalion, King of Cyprus, was said to have made an ivory image of a maiden so surpassingly beautiful, that he fell desperately in love with it. He prayed so hard to the goddess Aphrodite to have it inspired with life, that his prayer was granted; whereupon he married the maiden.

• Emprise is merely an old syncopated form of enterprise. Used by Spenser.

13 To crown his toils, Sir Industry then spread
The swelling sail, and made for Britain's coast.
A sylvan life till then the natives led,

In the brown shades and greenwood forest lost,
All careless rambling where it liked them most;
Their wealth the wild deer bouncing through the glade;
They lodged at large, and lived at Nature's cost,

Save
spear and bow, withouten other aid;
Yet not the Roman steel their naked breast dismay'd.

14 He liked the soil, he liked the clement skies,

He liked the verdant hills and flowery plains: "Be this my great, my chosen isle," he cries, "This, whilst my labours Liberty sustains, This queen of ocean all assault disdains." Nor liked he less the genius of the land, To freedom apt and persevering pains, Mild to obey, and generous to command, Temper'd by forming Heaven with kindest, firmest hand.

15 Here, by degrees, his master-work arose,

Whatever arts and industry can frame;

Whatever finish'd agriculture knows,

Fair queen of arts! from Heaven itself who came,
When Eden flourish'd in unspotted fame;

And still with her sweet innocence we find,
And tender peace, and joys without a name,
That, while they ravish, tranquillise the mind:
Nature and art at once, delight and use combined.

16 Then towns he quicken'd by mechanic arts,
And bade the fervent city glow with toil;
Bade social commerce raise renowned marts,
Join land to land, and marry soil to soil;
Unite the poles, and without bloody spoil
Bring home of either Ind the gorgeous stores;
Or, should despotic rage the world embroil,
Bade tyrants tremble on remotest shores,

While o'er th' encircling deep Britannia's thunder roars.

JAMES THOMSON: 1700-1748

OLD FOUNTAINS AND SUN-DIALS.

423

OLD FOUNTAINS AND SUN-DIALS.

WHAT a collegiate aspect has that fine Elizabethan hall where the fountain plays, which I have made to rise and fall, how many times! to the astoundment of the young urchins, my contemporaries, who, not being able to guess at its recondite machinery, were almost tempted to hail the wondrous work as magic! What an antique air had the now almost effaced sun-dials, with their moral inscriptions, seeming coevals with that Time which they measured, and to take their revelations of its flight immediately from heaven, holding correspondence with the fountain of light! How would the dark line steal imperceptibly on, watched by the eye of childhood, eager to detect its movement, never catched, nice as an evanescent cloud, or the first arrests of sleep!

What a dead thing is a clock, with its ponderous embowelments of lead and brass, its pert or solemn dulness of communication, compared with the simple altar-like structure, and silent heartlanguage of the old dial! It stood as the garden god of Christian gardens. Why is it almost everywhere vanished? If its businessuse be superseded by more elaborate inventions, its moral uses, its beauty, might have pleaded for its continuance. It spoke of moderate labours, of pleasures not protracted after sunset, of temperance, and good hours. It was the primitive clock, the horologe of the first world. Adam could scarce have missed it in Paradise. It was the measure appropriate for sweet plants and flowers to spring by, for the birds to apportion their silver warblings by, for flocks to pasture and be led to fold by. The shepherd “carved it out quaintly in the sun"; and, turning philosopher by the very occupation, provided it with mottoes more touching than tombstones.

It was a pretty device of the gardener, recorded by Marvell, who, in the days of artificial gardening, made a dial out of herbs and flowers. I must quote his verses, for they are full, as all his serious poetry was, of a witty delicacy. They will not come in awkwardly, I hope, in a talk of fountains and sun-dials. He is speaking of sweet garden-scenes:

What wondrous life is this I lead!
Ripe apples drop about my head:
The luscious clusters of the vine
Upon my mouth do crush their wine:

The nectarine and curious peach
Into my hands themselves do reach :
Stumbling on melons, as I pass,
Ensnared with flowers, I fall on grass :
Meanwhile the mind, from pleasure less,
Withdraws into its happiness, —

The mind, that ocean, where each kind
Does straight its own resemblance find;
Yet it creates, transcending these,
Far other worlds and other seas;
Annihilating all that's made,

To a green thought in a green shade.
Here, at the fountain's sliding foot,
Or at some fruit-tree's mossy root,
Casting the body's vest aside,

My soul into the boughs does glide :
There, like a bird, it sits and sings,
Then wets and claps its silver wings,
And, till prepared for longer flight,
Waves in its plumes the various light.
How well the skilful gardener drew,
of flowers and herbs, this dial new !
Where, from above, the milder sun
Does through a fragrant zodiac run;
And, as it works, th' industrious bee
Computes its time as well as we.

How could such sweet and wholesome hours

Be reckon'd, but with herbs and flowers?

The artificial fountains of the metropolis are, in like manner, fast vanishing. Most of them are dried up or bricked over. Yet, where one is left, as in that little green nook behind the South-Sea House, what a freshness it gives to the dreary pile! Four little winged marble boys used to play their virgin fancies, spouting out ever-fresh streams from their innocent-wanton lips in the square of Lincoln's-Inn,' when I was no bigger than they were figured. They are gone, and the spring choked up. The fashion, they tell me, is gone by, and these things are esteemed childish. Why not, then, gratify children, by letting them stand? Lawyers, I suppose, were children once. They are awakening images to them at least. Why must every thing smack of man and mannish? Is the world all grown up? Is childhood dead? Or is there not in the bosoms of the wisest and the best some of the child's heart left, to respond

1 Lincoln's-Inn is one of the old London schools where students at law studied and had their lodgings. Such schools were commonly called "inns-of-court." Of course they were a common resort for lawyers.