Thump after thump resounds the constant flail, That seems to swing uncertain, and yet falls Full on the destin'd ear. Wide flies the chaff, The rustling straw sends up a frequent mist Of atoms, sparkling in the noonday beam. Come hither, ye that press your beds of down, And sleep not; see him sweating o'er his bread Before he eats it.-'T is the primal curse, But soften'd into mercy; made the pledge Of cheerful days and nights without a groan. By ceaseless action all that is subsists. Constant rotation of th' unwearied wheel That Nature rides upon, maintains her health, Her beauty, her fertility. She dreads
An instant's pause, and lives but while she
Its own revolvency upholds the World, Winds from all quarters agitate the air, And fit the limpid element for use,
Else noxious; oceans, rivers, lakes, and streams, All feel the fresh'ning impulse, and are cleans'd By restless undulation: e'en the oak
Thrives by the rude concussion of the storm: He seems indeed indignant, and to feel
Th' impression of the blast with proud disdain, Frowning, as if in his unconscious arm
He held the thunder: but the monarch owes His firm stability to what he scorns,
More fix'd below, the more disturb'd above. The law, by which all creatures else are bound, Binds man, the Lord of all. Himself derives No mean advantage from a kindred cause,
From strenuous toil his hours of sweetest ease. The sedentary stretch their lazy length
When Custom bids, but no refreshment find, For none they need: the languid eye, the cheek Deserted of its bloom, the flaccid, shrunk, And wither'd muscle, and the vapid soul, Reproach their owner with that love of rest, To which he forfeits e'en the rest he loves. Not such the alert and active. Measure life By its true worth, the comforts it affords, And theirs alone seems worthy of the name. Good health, and its associate in the most, Good temper; spirits prompt to undertake, And not soon spent, though in an arduous task; The pow'rs of fancy and strong thought are theirs ;
E'en age itself seems privileg'd in them With clear exemption from its own defects. A sparkling eye beneath a wrinkled front The vet'ran shows, and, gracing a gray beard With youthful smiles, descends towards the
Sprightly, and old almost without decay.
Like a coy maiden, Ease, when courted most, Furthest retires-an idol, at whose shrine Who oft'nest sacrifice are favour'd least. The love of Nature, and the scenes she draws, Is nature's dictate. Strange! there should be
Who, self-imprison'd in their proud saloons, Renounce the odours of the open field For the unscented fictions of the loom;
Who, satisfied with only pencill'd scenes, Prefer to the performance of a God Th' inferior wonders of an artist's hand! Lovely indeed the mimic works of Art; But Nature's works far lovelier. I admire, None more admires the painter's magic skill; Who shows me that which I shall never see, Conveys a distant country into mine,
And throws Italian light on English walls: But imitative strokes can do no more
Than please the eye-sweet Nature's ev'ry
The air salubrious of her lofty hills,
The cheering fragrance of her dewy vales, And music of her woods-no works of man May rival these, these all bespeak a pow'r Peculiar, and exclusively her own. Beneath the open sky she spreads the feast; 'T is free to all-'t is ev'ry day renew'd; Who scorns it starves deservedly at home. 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
And riots in the sweets of ev'ry breeze.
He does not scorn it, who has long endur'd A fever's agonies, and fed on drugs.
Nor yet the mariner, his blood inflam'd With acrid salts; his very heart athirst, To gaze at Nature in her green array, Upon the ship's tall side he stands, possese'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 pêtulance, the frown, And sullen sadness, that o'ershade, distort, And mar the face of Beauty, when no cause For such immeasurable wo appears, These Flora banishes, and gives the fair Sweet smiles, and bloom less transient than her
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 cypher, while her proxy plays. Others are dragg'd into a 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 e'en 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 gayety of those,
Whose headaches nail them to a noonday bed; And save me too from theirs, whose haggard
Flash desperation, and betray their pangs For property stripp'd off by cruel chance; From gayety, that fills the bones with pain, The mouth with blasphemy, the heart with wo.
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