The Task and Other Poems | Page 7

out of every hedge,?Which, kindled with dry leaves, just saves unquenched?The spark of life. The sportive wind blows wide?Their fluttering rags, and shows a tawny skin,?The vellum of the pedigree they claim.?Great skill have they in palmistry, and more?To conjure clean away the gold they touch,?Conveying worthless dross into its place;?Loud when they beg, dumb only when they steal.?Strange! that a creature rational, and cast?In human mould, should brutalise by choice?His nature, and, though capable of arts?By which the world might profit and himself,?Self-banished from society, prefer?Such squalid sloth to honourable toil.?Yet even these, though feigning sickness oft?They swathe the forehead, drag the limping limb,?And vex their flesh with artificial sores,?Can change their whine into a mirthful note?When safe occasion offers, and with dance,?And music of the bladder and the bag,?Beguile their woes, and make the woods resound.?Such health and gaiety of heart enjoy?The houseless rovers of the sylvan world;?And breathing wholesome air, and wandering much,?Need other physic none to heal the effects?Of loathsome diet, penury, and cold.
Blest he, though undistinguished 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 temperate 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 barbarous climes, where violence prevails,?And strength is lord of all; but gentle, kind,?By culture tamed, by liberty refreshed,?And all her fruits by radiant truth matured.?War and the chase engross the savage whole;?War followed 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 shivering natives of the north,?And thus the rangers of the western world,?Where it advances far into the deep,?Towards the Antarctic. Even the favoured 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 passed?By navigators uninformed as they,?Or ploughed perhaps by British bark again.?But far beyond the rest, and with most cause,?Thee, gentle savage! whom no love of thee?Or thine, but curiosity perhaps,?Or else vain-glory, prompted us to draw?Forth from thy native bowers, to show thee here?With what superior skill we can abuse?The gifts of Providence, and squander life.?The dream is past. And thou hast found again?Thy cocoas and bananas, palms, and yams,?And homestall thatched with leaves. But hast thou found?Their former charms? And, having seen our state,?Our palaces, our ladies, and our pomp?Of equipage, our gardens, and our sports,?And heard our music; are thy simple friends,?Thy simple fare, and all thy plain delights?As dear to thee as once? And have thy joys?Lost nothing by comparison with ours??Rude as thou art (for we returned thee rude?And ignorant, except of outward show),?I cannot think thee yet so dull of heart?And spiritless, as never to regret?Sweets tasted here, and left as soon as known.?Methinks I see thee straying on the beach,?And asking of the surge that bathes the foot?If ever it has washed our distant shore.?I see thee weep, and thine are honest tears,?A patriot's for his country. Thou art sad?At thought of her forlorn and abject state,?From which no power of thine can raise her up.?Thus fancy paints thee, and, though apt to err,?Perhaps errs little when she paints thee thus.?She tells me too that duly every morn?Thou climb'st the mountain-top, with eager eye?Exploring far and wide the watery waste,?For sight of ship from England. Every speck?Seen in the dim horizon turns thee pale?With conflict of contending hopes and fears.?But comes at last the dull and dusky eve,?And sends thee to thy cabin, well prepared?To dream all night of what the day denied.?Alas, expect it not. We found no bait?To tempt us in thy country. Doing good,?Disinterested good, is not our trade.?We travel far, 'tis true, but not for naught;?And must be bribed to compass earth again?By other hopes, and richer fruits than yours.
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 every land.?In cities, foul example on most minds?Begets its likeness. Rank abundance breeds?In gross and pampered cities sloth and lust,?And wantonness and gluttonous excess.?In cities, vice is hidden