ARGUMENT OF THE FOURTH BOOK The post comes in....The news-paper is read....The world contemplated at a distance....Address to Winter....The rural amusements of a winter evening compared with the fashionable ones....Address to evening....A brown study....Fall of snow in the evening.... The waggoner....A poor family-piece.... The rural thief.... Public houses....The multitude of them censured....The farmer's daughter: what she was....what she is....The simplicity of country manners almost lost....Causes of the change....De. sertion of the country by the rich....Neglect of magistrates....The militia principally in fault....The new recruit and his transformation....Reflection on bodies corporate....The love of rural objects natural to all, and never to be totally extinguished: THE TASK. BOOK IV. THE WINTER EVENING. HARK! 'tis the twanging horn o'er yonder bridge, That with its wearisome but needful length Bestrides the wintry flood, in which the moon Sees her unwrinkled face reflected bright ;'He comes, the herald of a noisy world, With spatter'd boots, strapp'd waist, and frozen locks; News from all nations lumb'ring at his back. And, having dropp'd th' expected bag, pass on. Cat'racts of declamation thunder here; But gay Teeth for the toothless, ringlets for the bald, At his own wonders, wond'ring for his bread. 'Tis pleasant through the loop-holes of retreat To peep at such a world; to see the stir Of the great Babel, and not feel the crowd; To hear the roar she sends through all her gates At a safe distance, where the dying sound Falls a soft murmur on th' uninjur'd ear. Thus sitting, and surveying thus at ease The globe and its concerns, I seem advanc'd To some secure and more than mortal height, That lib'rates and exempts me from them all. It turns submitted to my view, turns round With all its generations; I behold The tumult, and am still. The sound of war Grieves, but alarms me not. I mourn the pride From flow'r to flow'r, so he from land to land; Oh Winter, ruler of th' inverted year, Thy scatter'd hair, with sleet like ashes fill'd, Thy breath congeal'd upon thy lips, thy cheeks Fring'd with a beard made white with other snows Than those of age, thy forehead wrapt in clouds, A leafless branch thy sceptre, and thy throne A sliding car, indebted to no wheels, |