Who pant with application misapplied

To trivial joys, and pushing ivory balls
Across a velvet level, feel a joy
Akin to rapture, when the bauble finds
Its destined goal of difficult access.
Nor deems he wiser him, who gives his noon
To miss, the mercer's plague, from shop to shop
Wandering, and littering with unfolded silks
The polish d counter, and approving none,
Or promising with smiles to call again.
Nor him who, by his vanity seduced,
And soothed into a dream that he discerns
The difference of a Guido from a daub,
Frequents the crowded auction: station'd there
As duly as the Langford of the show,
With glass at eye, and catalogue in hand,
And tongue accomplish'd in the fulsome cant
And pedantry that coxcombs learn with ease:
Oft as the price-deciding hammer falls,
He notes it in his book, then raps his box,
Swears 'tis a bargain, rails at his hard fate
That he has let it pass-but never bids.

Here unmolested, through whatever sign
The sun proceeds I wander. Neither mist,
Nor freezing sky nor sultry, checking me,
Nor stranger intermeddling with my joy.
E'en in the spring and playtime of the year,
That calls the unwonted villager abroad
With all her little ones. a sportive train,
To gather kingcups in the yellow mead,
And prink their hair with daisies, or to pick
A cheap but wholesome salad from the brook,
These shades are all my own. The timorous
hare,

Grown so familiar with her frequent guest,
Scarce shuns me; and the stockdove unalarm'd
Sits cooing in the pine-tree, nor suspends
His long love-ditty for my near approach.
Drawn from his refuge in some lonely elm,
That age or injury has hollow'd deep,
Where, on his bed of wool and matted leaves,
He has outslept the winter, ventures forth
To frisk awhile, and bask in the warm sun,
The squirrel, flippant pert, and full of play:
He sees me, and at once, swift as a bird,
Ascends the neighboring beech; there whisks
his brush,

And perks his ears, and stamps, and cries aloud,
With all the prettiness of feign'd alarm,
And anger insignificantly fierce.

The heart is hard in nature, and unfit
For human fellowship as being void
Of sympathy, and therefore dead alike
To love and friendship both, that is not pleased
With sight of animals enjoying life,

Nor feels their happiness augment his own.
The bounding fawn, that darts across the glade
Where none pursues, through mere delight of
heart,

And spirits buoyant with excess of glee;
The horse as wanton, and almost as fleet,
That skims the spacious meadow at full speed,
Then stops and snorts, and, throwing high his
heels,

Starts to the voluntary race again;
The very kine that gambol at high noon,
The total herd receiving first from one
That leads the dance a summons to be gay,
Though wild their strange vagaries, and uncouth
Their efforts, yet resolved with one consent
To give such act and utterance as they may
To ecstacy too big to be suppress'd-

These, and a thousand images of bliss,
With which kind Nature graces every scene,
Where cruel man defeats not her design,
Impart to the benevolent who wish
All that are capable of pleasure pleased,
A far superior happiness to theirs,
The comfort of a reasonable joy.

Man scarce had risen, obedient to His call Who form'd him from the dust, his future grave, When he was crown'd as never king was since. God set the diadem upon his head,

And angel choirs attended. Wondering stood
The new-made monarch, while before him pass'd,
All happy, and all perfect in their kind, [haunts
The creatures, summoned from their various
To see their sovereign, and confess his sway.
Vast was his empire, absolute his power,
Or bounded only by a law, whose force
'Twas his sublimest privilege to feel
And own, the law of universal love.
He ruled with meekness, they obeyed with joy;
No cruel purpose lurk'd within his heart,
And no distrust of his intent in theirs.
So Eden was a scene of harmless sport,
Where kindness on his part, who rules the whole,
Begat a tranquil confidence in all,

And fear as yet was not, nor cause to fear.
But sin marr'd all; and the revolt of man,
That source of evils not exhausted yet,
Was punish'd with revolt of his from him.
Garden of God, how terrible the change [heart,
Thy groves and lawns then witness'd! Every
Each animal, of every name, conceived
A jealousy and an instinctive fear,
And, conscious of some danger, either fled
Precipitate the loathed abode of man,
Or growl'd defiance in such angry sort,
As taught him too to tremble in his turn.
Thus harmony and family accord
Were driven from Paradise; and in that hour
The seeds of cruelty, that since have swell'd
To such gigantic and enormous growth,
Were sown in human nature's fruitful soil.
Hence date the persecution and the pain
That man inflicts on all inferior kinds,
Regardless of their plaints. To make him sport,
To gratify the frenzy of his wrath,
Or his base gluttony, are causes good
And just in his account, why bird and beast
Should suffer torture, and the streams be dyed
With blood of their inhabitants impaled.
Earth groans beneath the burden of a war
Waged with defenceless innocence, while he,
Not satisfied to prey on all around,
Adds tenfold bitterness to death by pangs
Needless, and first torments ere he devours.
Now happiest they that occupy the scenes
The most remote from his abhorr'd resort,
Whom once, as delegate of God on earth,
They fear'd, and as his perfect image loved.
The wilderness is theirs, with all its caves,
Its hollow glens, its thickets and its plains,
Unvisited by man. There they are free,
And howl and roar as likes them uncontroll'd;
Nor ask his leave to slumber or to play.
Woe to the tyrant, if he dare intrude
Within the confines of their wild domain:
The lion tells him-I am monarch here!
And. if he spare him, spares him on the terms
Of royal mercy and through generous scorn
To rend a victin trembling at his foot.
In measure, as by force of instinct drawn,

Deep in the flood, found, when he sought it not,
The death he had deserved, and died alone.
So God wrought double justice; made the fool
The victim of his own tremendous choice,
And taught a brute the way to safe revenge.

I would not enter on my list of friends [sense,
(Though graced with polish'd manners and fine
Yet wanting sensibility) the man
Who needlessly sets foot upon a worm.
An inadvertent step may crush the snail
That crawls at evening in the public path:
But he that has humanity, forewarn'd,
Will tread aside, and let the reptile live.
The creeping vermin, loathso.ne to the sight,
And charged perhaps with venom, that intrudes,
A visitor unwelcome, into scenes

Sacred to neatness, and repose, the alcove,
The chamber, or refectory, may die:
A necessary act incurs no blame.

Not so when, held within their proper bounds,
And guiltless of offence, they range the air,
Or take their pastime in the spacious field:
There they are privileged; and he that hunts
Or harms them there is guilty of a wrong,
Disturbs the economy of Nature's realm,
Who, when she form'd, design'd them an abode.
• The sum is this. If man's convenience, health,
Or safety interiere, his rights and claims
Are paramount, and must extinguish theirs.
Else they are all-the meanest things that are,
As free to live, and to enjoy that life,
As God was free to form them at the first,
Who in his sovereign wisdom made them all.
Ye therefore, who love mercy, teach your sons
To love it too. The spring-time of our years
Is soon dishonor'd and defiled in most,
By budding ills, that ask a prudent hand
To check them. But, alas! none sooner shoots,
If unrestrain'd, into luxuriant growth,
Than cruelty, most devilish of them all.
Mercy to him that shows it is the rule
And righteous limitation of its act.

By which Heaven moves in pardoning guilty man;
And he that shows none, being ripe in years,
And conscious of the outrage he commits,
Shall seek it and not find it in his turn.
Distinguish'd much by reason, and still more
By our capacity of grace divine,

From creatures that exist but for our sake,
Which having served us, perish, we are held
Accountable; and God, some future day,
Will reckon with us roundly for the abuse
Of what he deems no mean or trivial trust.
Superior as we are they yet depend
Not more on human help than we on theirs.
Their strength or speed, or vigilance, were given
In aid of our defects. In some are found
Such teachable and apprehensive parts,
That man's attainments in his own concerns,
Match'd with the expertness of the brutes in
theirs,

Are ofttimes vanquish'd and thrown far behind.
Sone show that nice sagacity of smell.
And read with such discernaient in the port
And figure of the man, his secret aim,
That out we owe our safety to a skill

We could not teach and must despair to learn.
But learn we might if not too proud to stoop
To quadruped instructors many a good
And useful quality and virtue too
Rarely exemplified among ourselves-
Attachment never to be wean'd or changed

By any change of fortune; proof alike
Against unkindness. absence, and neglect;
Fidelity, that neither bribe nor threat
Can move or warp; and gratitude for small,
And trivial favors, lasting as the life
And glistening even in the dying eye.

Man praises man. Desert in arts or arms
Wins public honor; and ten thousand sit
Patiently present at a sacred song,
Commemoration-mad; content to hear
(0 wonderful effect of music's power!)
Messiah's eulogy for Handel's sake.

But less methinks than sacrilege might serve-
(For was it less, what heathen would have dared
To strip Jove's statue of his oaken wreath,
And hang it up in honor of a man?)
Much less might serve, when all that we design
It but to gratify an itching ear,

And give the day to a musician's praise.
Remember Handel? Who that was not born
Deaf as the dead to harmony, forgets,
Or can, the more than Homer of his age ?
Yes-we remember him; and while we praise
A talent so divine remember too
That His most holy book, from whom it came,
Was never meant was never used before,
To buckram out the memory of a man.
But hush!-the muse perhaps is too severe;
And, with a gravity beyond the size
And measure of the offence rebukes a deed'
Less impious than absurd, and owing more
To want of judgment than to wrong design.
So in the chapel of old Ely House, [third,
When wandering Charles, who meant to be the
Had fled from William, and the news was fresh,
The simple clerk but loyal, did announce,
And eke did rear right merrily, two staves,
Sung to the praise and glory of King George!
-Man praises man; and Garrick's memory next,
When time hath somewhat mellow'd it, and made
The idol of our worship while he lived
The god of our idolatry once more,
Shall have its altar; and the world shall go
In pilgrimage to bow before his shrine.
The theatre, too small, shall suffocate
Its squeezed contents and more than it admits
Shall sigh at their exclusion, and return
Ungratified: for there some noble lord [bunch,
Shall stuff his shoulders with king Richard's
Or wrap himself in Hamlet's inky cloak. [stare,
And strut and storm and straddle, stamp and
To show the world how Garrick did not act-
For Garrick was a worshipper himself;
He drew the liturgy, and framed the rites
And solemn ceremonial of the day,
And call'd the world to worship on the banks
Of Avon, famed in song. Ah pleasant proof
That piety had still in human hearts
Some place, a spark or two not yet extinct.
The mulberry-tree was hung with blooming
wreaths;

The mulberry-tree stood centre of the dance;
The mulberry-tree was bynn'd with dulcet airs;
And from his touchwood trunk the mulberry-tree
Supplied such relics as devotion holds
Still sacred and preserves with pious care.
So 'twas a hallow'd time: decorum reign'd,
And mirth without offence. No few return'd,
Doubtless much edified, and all refresh'd.

-Man praises man. The rabble all alive, From tippling benches, cellars, stalls, and styes, Swarm in the streets. The statesman of the day

A pompous and slow-moving pageant, comes. Some shout him, and some hang upon his car. To gaze in his eyes, and bless him. Maidens

wave

Their kerchiefs, and old women weep for joy;
While others, not so satisfied, unhorse
The gilded equipage, and turning loose
His steeds, usurp a place they well deserve.
Why? what has charm'd them? Hath he saved
the state?

No. Doth he purpose its salvation? No.
Enchanting novelty, that moon at full,
That finds out every crevice of the head
That is not sound and perfect. hath in theirs
Wrought this disturbance. But the wane is near
And his own cattle must suffice him soon.
Thus idly do we waste the breath of praise,
And dedicate a tribute in its use
And just direction sacred, to a thing
Doom'd to the dust or lodged already there.
Encomium in old time was poet's work;
But poets, having lavishly long since
Exhausted all materials of the art,
The task now falls into the public hand;
And I, contented with an humble theme,
Have pour'd my stream of panegyric down
The vale of Nature, where it creeps and winds
Among her lovely works with a secure
And unambitious course, reflecting clear,
If not the virtues, yet the worth, of brutes.
And I am recompensed, and deem the toils
Of poetry not lost if verse of mine
May stand between an animal and woe,
And teach one tyrant pity for his drudge.

The groans of Nature in this nether world,
Which heaven has heard for ages, have an end.
Foretold by prophets, and by pocts sung,
Whose fire was kindled at the prophets' lamp,
The time of rest, the promised sabbath. comes.
Six thousand years of sorrow have well nigh
Fulfill'd their tardy and disastrous course
Over a sinful world; and what remains
Of this tempestuous state of human things
Is merely as the working of a sea
Before a calm, that rocks itself to rest;

For He, whose car the winds are, and the clouds
The dust that waits upon his sultry march,
When sin hath moved him, and his wrath is hot,
Shall visit earth in mercy; shall descend
Propitious in his chariot paved with love;
And what his storms have blasted and defaced
For man's revolt, shall with a smile repair.

Sweet is the harp of prophecy; too sweet
Not to be wrong'd by a mere mortal touch:
Nor can the wonders it records be sung
To meaner music, and not suffer loss.
But when a poet or when one like me,
Happy to rove among poetic flowers,
Though poor in skill to rear them, lights at last
On some fair theme, some theme divinely fair,
Such is the impulse and the spur he feels,
To give it praise proportion'd to its worth,
That not to attempt it, arduous as he deems
The labor, were a task more arduous still.

Or fertile only in its own disgrace,
Exults to see its thistly curse repeal'd.
The various seasons woven into one,
And that one season an eternal spring.
The garden fears no blight, and needs no fence,
For there is none to covet, all are full.
The lion, and the libbard and the bear
Graze with the fearless flocks; all bask at noon
Together, or all gambol in the shade
Of the same grove, and drink one common stream,
Antipathies are none. No foe to man

Lurks in the serpent now: the mother sees,
And smiles to see, her infant's playful hand
Stretch'd forth to dally with the crested worn,
To stroke his azure neck or to receive
The lambent homage of his arrowy tongue.
All creatures worship man, and all mankind
One Lord, one Father. Error has no place;
That creeping pestilence is driven away;
The breath of heaven has chased it. In the hear
No passion touches a discordant string
But all is harmony and love. Disease
Is not the pure uncontaminate blood
Holds its due course, nor fears the frost of age.
One song employs all nations: and all cry,
"Worthy the Lamb, for he was slain for us!"
The dwellers in the vales and on the rocks
Shout to each other, and the mountain tops
From distant mountains catch the flying joy;
Till nation after nation taught the strain,
Earth rolls the rapturous Hosanna round.
Behold the measure of the promise fill'd;
See Salem built the labor of a God;
Bright as a sun, the sacred city shines;
All kingdoms and all princes of the earth
Flock to that light; the glory of all lands
Flows into her; unbounded is her joy,
And endless her increase. Thy rams are there,
Nebaioth, and the flocks of Kedar there;*
The looms of Ormus, and the mines of Ind,
And Saba's spicy groves, pay tribute there.
Praise is in all her gates: upon her walls.
And in her streets, and in her spacious courts,

Is heard salvation. Eastern Java there

Kneels with the native of the farthest west;
And Ethiopia spreads abroad the hand.
And worships. Her report has travell'd forth
Into all lands. From every clime they come
To see thy beauty, and to share thy joys,
O Sion! an assembly such as earth
Saw never, such as Heaven stoops down to see.

Thus heavenward all things tend. For all were
Perfect and all must be at length restored. [once
So God has greatly purposed; who would else
In his dishonor'd works himself endure
Dishonor, and be wrong'd without redress.
Haste, then, and wheel away a shatter'd world.
Ye slow-revolving seasons! we would see
(A sight to which our eyes are strangers yet)
A world that does not dread and hate his law
And suffer for its crime; would learn how fair
The creature is that God pronounces good,
How pleasant in itself what pleases him.
Here every drop of honey hides a sting;
Worms wind themselves into our sweetest flowers;
And e'en the joy that haply some poor heart
Derives from heaven pure as the fountain is,
Is sullied in the stream, taking a taint

Laughs with abundance; and the land, once

*Nebaioth and Kedar, the sons of Ishmael, and pro

Tuded to, may be reasonably considered as representa tives of the Gentiles at large.