The Task and Other Poems | Page 6

hue,?His eye relumines its extinguished fires,?He walks, he leaps, he runs--is winged with joy,?And riots in the sweets of every 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, possessed?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 lowering 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 pedlar'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 famished--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 dragged 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 even 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 inveterate 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 stripped 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 sheltered 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.?Then forests, or the savage rock may please,?That hides the sea-mew in his hollow clefts?Above the reach of man: his hoary head?Conspicuous many a league, the mariner,?Bound homeward, and in hope already there,?Greets with three cheers exulting. At his waist?A girdle of half-withered shrubs he shows,?And at his feet the baffled billows die.?The common overgrown with fern, and rough?With prickly gorse, that, shapeless and deformed?And dangerous to the touch, has yet its bloom,?And decks itself with ornaments of gold,?Yields no unpleasing ramble; there the turf?Smells fresh, and, rich in odoriferous herbs?And fungous fruits of earth, regales the sense?With luxury of unexpected sweets.
There often wanders one, whom better days?Saw better clad, in cloak of satin trimmed?With lace, and hat with splendid ribbon bound.?A serving-maid was she, and fell in love?With one who left her, went to sea and died.?Her fancy followed him through foaming waves?To distant shores, and she would sit and weep?At what a sailor suffers; fancy too,?Delusive most where warmest wishes are,?Would oft anticipate his glad return,?And dream of transports she was not to know.?She heard the doleful tidings of his death,?And never smiled again. And now she roams?The dreary waste; there spends the livelong day,?And there, unless when charity forbids,?The livelong night. A tattered apron hides,?Worn as a cloak, and hardly hides, a gown?More tattered still; and both but ill conceal?A bosom heaved with never-ceasing sighs.?She begs an idle pin of all she meets,?And hoards them in her sleeve; but needful food,?Though pressed with hunger oft, or comelier clothes,?Though pinched with cold, asks never.--Kate is crazed!
I see a column of slow-rising smoke?O'ertop the lofty wood that skirts the wild.?A vagabond and useless tribe there eat?Their miserable meal. A kettle slung?Between two poles upon a stick transverse,?Receives the morsel; flesh obscene of dog,?Or vermin, or, at best, of cock purloined?From his accustomed perch. Hard-faring race!?They pick their fuel