LXXII

'Then patient bear the sufferings you have earned,
And by these sufferings purify the mind;
Let wisdom be by past misconduct learned:
Or pious die, with penitence resigned;
And to a life more happy and refined

Doubt not you shall, new creatures, yet arise.
Till then, you may expect in me to find

One who will wipe your sorrow from your eyes, One who will soothe your pangs, and wing you to the skies.'

LXXIII

They silent heard, and poured their thanks in tears. 'For you (resumed the Knight, with sterner tone) Whose hard dry hearts the obdurate demon sears— That villain's gifts will cost you many a groan; In dolorous mansion long you must bemoan His fatal charms, and weep your stains away; Till, soft and pure as infant goodness grown, You feel a perfect change: then, who can say What grace may yet shine forth in Heaven's eternal day?'

LXXIV

This said, his powerful wand he waved anew:
Instant, a glorious angel-train descends,
The charities, to-wit, of rosy hue:

Sweet love their looks a gentle radiance lends,
And with seraphic flame compassion blends.
At once delighted to their charge they fly:
When lo a goodly hospital ascends,

In which they bade each human aid be nigh, That could the sick-bed smoothe of that unhappy fry.

LXXV

It was a worthy edifying sight,

And gives to human-kind peculiar grace,
To see kind hands attending day and night
With tender ministry from place to place.

Some prop the head; some from the pallid face
Wipe off the faint cold dews weak nature sheds;
Some reach the healing draught: the whilst, to
chase

The fear supreme, around their softened beds, Some holy man by prayer all opening heaven dispreads.

LXXVI

Attended by a glad acclaiming train

Of those he rescued had from gaping hell, Then turned the knight; and, to his hall again Soft-pacing, sought of Peace the mossy cell. Yet down his cheeks the gems of pity fell, To see the helpless wretches that remained, There left through delves and deserts dire to yell: Amazed, their looks with pale dismay were stained, And, spreading wide their hands, they meek repentance feigned.

LXXVII

But ah! their scornèd day of grace was past:
For (horrible to tell!) a desert wild

Before them stretched, bare, comfortless, and vast;
With gibbets, bones, and carcases defiled.
There nor trim field nor lively culture smiled;
Nor waving shade was seen, nor fountain fair :
But sands abrupt on sands lay loosely piled,
Through which they floundering toiled with painful

care,

Whilst Phoebus smote them sore, and fired the cloud

less air.

LXXVIII

Then, varying to a joyless land of bogs,

The saddened country a gray waste appeared, Where nought but putrid steams and noisome fogs For ever hung on drizzly Auster's beard;

Or else the ground, by piercing Caurus seared, Was jagged with frost or heaped with glazed snow: Through these extremes a ceaseless round they steered,

By cruel fiends still hurried to and fro,

Gaunt Beggary, and Scorn, with many hell-hounds

moe.

LXXIX

The first was with base dunghill rags yclad,
Tainting the gale in which they fluttered light;
Of morbid hue his features, sunk and sad;
His hollow eyne shook forth a sickly light;
And o'er his lank jawbone, in piteous plight,
His black rough beard was matted rank and vile;
Direful to see! a heart-appalling sight!

Meantime foul scurf and blotches him defile;
And dogs, where'er he went, still barked all the while.

LXXX

The other was a fell despightful fiend

Hell holds none worse in baleful bower below;
By pride, and wit, and rage, and rancour keened;
Of man, alike if good or bad, the foe:
With nose upturned, he always made a show
As if he smelt some nauseous scent; his eye
Was cold and keen, like blast from boreal snow;
And taunts he casten forth most bitterly.

Such were the twain that off drove this ungodly fry.

LXXXI

Even so through Brentford town, a town of mud, An herd of bristly swine is pricked along;

The filthy beasts, that never chew the cud,

Still grunt, and squeak, and sing their troublous

song,

And oft they plunge themselves the mire among ; But ay the ruthless driver goads them on, And ay of barking dogs the bitter throng Makes them renew their unmelodious moan; Ne ever find they rest from their unresting fone.

NOTES TO THE CASTLE OF INDOLENCE

'After fourteen or fifteen years The Castle of Indolence comes abroad in a fortnight': so wrote Thomson in the middle of April, 1748, to William Paterson, his friend and successor in the office of Surveyor-General of the Leeward Islands. The slow and leisurely composition of the poem was therefore begun before Thomson went to live at Richmond, in 1736, and covered the whole of his period of residence there. It was probably published early in May. The first edition was in quarto; the second, published in the same year, in octavo. The text of the latter is followed in the present edition. Thomson died in August of the same year.

:

Murdoch, Thomson's first and kindliest biographer, thus describes the origin and growth of The Castle of Indolence :'It was at first little more than a few detached stanzas in the way of raillery on himself, and on some of his friends, who would reproach him with indolence, while he thought them at least as indolent as himself. But he saw very soon that the subject deserved to be treated more seriously, and in a form fitted to convey one of the most important moral lessons.'

The poem is more exquisite and free in point of style than The Seasons, but less poetical and less popular. As Gray hints, it is best enjoyed in detached stanzas. It is for the pocket of poet or artist who loves to linger over its exquisitely presented imagery or sentiment, while The Seasons is for the inn parlour, and the general reader who is pleased with broad general effects. The first canto, which sets forth the pleasures of indolence, is

at best an apology for an indolent life; the second is a warning intended to discourage the indulgence of indolence. There is poetry in the first canto: the second is mostly didactic.

CANTO I. stanza xxx. 1. 1. Those islands on the western coast of Scotland, called the Hebrides.-T.

I. XL. 9. This is not an imagination of the author, there being in fact such an instrument, called Aeolus's harp, which, when placed against a little rushing or current of air, produces the effect here described.-T.

I. XLII. 7. The Arabian Caliphs had poets among the officers of their court whose office it was to do what is here mentioned.-T. I. LIV. 6. Lucifer—the Morning Star.-T.

I. LVII. 2. a man of special grave remark. Probably William Paterson; perhaps Collins.

I. LX. 3. One shyer still. Supposed to be Dr. Armstrong. I. LXI. 1. Here lurked a wretch. Said to have been 'Henry Welby, Esquire, an eccentric solitaire of the period'.

I. LXII. 2. A joyous youth. John Forbes, son of the Lord President.

I. LXV. 1. Another guest. George Lyttelton, of Hagley Park. I. LXVII. 1. the Esopus of the age. Quin, the actor-temporarily driven from the stage by the success of his young rival, Garrick. I. LXVIII. 1. A bard here dwelt. Thomson himself. 'The following lines of this stanza were writ by a friend of the author'says Thomson in a footnote. The friend is supposed to have been Lyttelton.

I. LXIX. 3. A little, round, fat, oily man of God. The Rev. Patrick Murdoch, at one time tutor to John Forbes; the Soporific doctor' of the Miscellaneous Poems-which see.

I. LXXIV-LXXVII. Written by Dr. Armstrong.

II. XXI. 2. the famed city by Propontis Sea. Constantinople.-T. II. XLIII. 2. The wary retiarius. A gladiator who made use of a net which he threw over his adversary.-T.