He does not scorn it, who, imprison'd long
In some unwholesome dungeon, and a prey
To sallow sickness, which the vapours dank
And clammy of his dark abode have bred,
Escapes at last to liberty and light;

His cheek recovers soon its healthful hue,
His eye relumines its extinguish'd fires,
He walks, he leaps, he runs-is wing'd with joy,
And riots in the sweets of ev'ry breeze.
He does not scorn it, who has long endured
A fever's agonies, and fed on drugs.
Nor yet the mariner, his blood inflamed
With acrid salts; his very heart athirst
To gaze at Nature in her green array.
Upon the ship's tall side he stands, possess'd
With visions prompted by intense desire;
Fair fields appear below, such as he left
Far distant, such as he would die to find-
He seeks them headlong, and is seen no more.
The spleen is seldom felt where Flora reigns;
The low'ring eye, the petulance, the frown,
And sullen sadness that o'ershade, distort,
And mar the face of beauty, when no cause
For such immeasurable woe appears,
These Flora banishes, and gives the fair

Sweet smiles, and bloom less transient than her

own.

It is the constant revolution, stale

And tasteless, of the same repeated joys,
That palls and satiates, and makes languid life
A pedler's pack, that bows the bearer down.
Health suffers, and the spirits ebb; the heart
Recoils from its own choice-at the full feast
Is famish'd-finds no music in the song,
No smartness in the jest, and wonders why.

Yet thousands still desire to journey on,
Though halt and weary of the path they tread.
The paralytic, who can hold her cards

But cannot play them, borrows a friend's hand
To deal and shuffle, to divide and sort
Her mingled suits and sequences, and sits
Spectatress both and spectacle, a sad
And silent cipher, while her proxy plays.
Others are dragg'd into the crowded room
Between supporters; and once seated, sit
Through downright inability to rise,
Till the stout bearers lift the corpse again.
These speak a loud memento. Yet ev'n these
Themselves love life, and cling to it as he
That overhangs a torrent, to a twig.

They love it, and yet loathe it ; fear to die.
Yet scorn the purposes for which they live.
Then wherefore not renounce them? No-the

dread,

The slavish dread of solitude, that breeds
Reflection and remorse, the fear of shame,
And their invet'rate habits, all forbid.

Whom call we gay? That honour has been long
The boast of mere pretenders to the name.
The innocent are gay-the lark is gay,
That dries his feathers saturate with dew
Beneath the rosy cloud, while yet the beams
Of day-spring overshoot his humble nest.
The peasant too, a witness of his song,
Himself a songster, is as gay as he.

But save me from the gaiety of those

Whose headaches nail them to a noonday bed; And save me, too, from theirs whose haggard eyes Flash desperation, and betray their pangs

For property stripp'd off by cruel chance:

From gaiety that fills the bones with pain,
The mouth with blasphemy, the heart with woe.
The earth was made so various, that the mind
Of desultory man, studious of change,

And pleased with novelty might be indulged.
Prospects however lovely may be seen

Till half their beauties fade; the weary sight,
Too well acquainted with their smiles, slides off
Fastidious, seeking less familiar scenes.
Then snug enclosures in the shelter'd vale,
Where frequent hedges intercept the eye,
Delight us, happy to renounce a while,

Not senseless of its charms, what still we love,
That such short absence may endear it more.

Blest he, though undistinguish'd from the crowd By wealth or dignity, who dwells secure Where man, by nature fierce, has laid aside His fierceness, having learnt, though slow to learn, The manners and the arts of civil life. His wants, indeed, are many; but supply Is obvious; placed within the easy reach Of temp'rate 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 barb'rous climes, where violence prevails, And strength is lord of all; but gentle, kind, By culture tamed, by liberty refresh'd, And all her fruits by radiant truth matured. War and the chase engross the savage whole; War follow'd 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,

Mean self-attachment, and scarce aught beside.
Thus fare the shiv'ring natives of the north,
And thus the rangers of the western world,
Where it advances far into the deep,
Towards th' Antartic. Ev'n the favour'd isles,
So lately found, although the constant sun
Cheer all their seasons with a grateful smile,
Can boast but little virtue; and inert
Through plenty, lose in morals what they gain
In manners, victims of luxurious ease.
These therefore I can pity, placed remote
From all that science traces, art invents,
Or inspiration teaches; and enclosed
In boundless oceans, never to be pass'd
By navigators uninform'd as they,

Or plough'd perhaps by British bark again.

But though true worth and virtue, in the mild And genial soil of cultivated life

Thrive most, and may perhaps thrive only there,
Yet not in cities oft. In proud and gay
And gain-devoted cities; thither flow,
As to a common and most noisome sewer,
The dregs and feculence of ev'ry land.
In cities, foul example on most minds
Begets its likeness. Rank abundance breeds
In gross and pamper'd cities sloth and lust,
And wantonness and gluttonous excess.
In cities, vice is hidden with most ease,
Or seen with least reproach; and virtue, taught
By frequent lapse, can hope no triumph there,
Beyond th' achievement of successful flight.
I do confess them nurs'ries of the arts,

In which they flourish most; where, in the beams Of warm encouragement, and in the eye

Of public note, they reach their perfect size. Such London is, by taste and wealth proclaim'd The fairest capital in all the world,

By riot and incontinence the worst.

There, touch'd by Reynolds, a dull blank becomes
A lucid mirror, in which Nature sees
All her reflected features. Bacon there
Gives more than female beauty to a stone,
And Chatham's eloquence to marble lips.
Nor does the chisel occupy alone

The pow'rs of sculpture, but the style as much;
Each province of her art her equal care.
With nice incision of her guided steel

She ploughs a brazen field, and clothes a soil
So sterile with what charms soe'er she will,
The richest scen'ry and the loveliest forms.
Where finds philosophy her eagle eye,
With which she gazes at yon burning disk
Undazzled, and detects and counts his spots ?
In London. Where her implements exact,
With which she calculates, computes, and scans
All distance, motion, magnitude, and now
Measures an atom, and now girds a world?
In London. Where has commerce such a mart,
So rich, so throng'd, so drain'd, and so supplied,
As London, opulent, enlarged, and still
Increasing London? Babylon of old
Not more the glory of the earth, than she
A more accomplish'd world's chief glory now.
She has her praise. Now mark a spot or two
That so much beauty would do well to purge;
And show this queen of cities, that so fair
May yet be foul; so witty, yet not wise.