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Commits no wrong, nor wastes what it enjoys.
Refreshing change! where now the blazing sun?
By short transition we have lost its glare,
And stepp'd at once into a cooler clime.
Ye fallen avenues! once more I mourn
Your fate unmerited, once more rejoice
That yet a remnant of your race survives.
How airy and how light the graceful arch,
Yet awful as the consecrated roof

Re-echoing pious anthems! while beneath
The checker'd earth seems restless as a flood
Brush'd by the wind. So sportive is the light
Shot through the boughs, it dances as they dance,
Shadow and sunshine intermingling quick,
And dark'ning, and enlight'ning, as the leaves
Play wanton, ev'ry moment, ev'ry spot.

And now,with nerves new brac'd and spirits cheer'd,
We tread the wilderness, whose well-roll'd walks
With curvature of slow and easy sweep-
Deception innocent-give ample space

To narrow bounds. The grove receives us next;
Between the upright shafts of whose tall elms
We may discern the thresher at his task.
Thump after thump resounds the constant flail,
That seems to swing uncertain, and yet falls
Full on the destin'd ear. Wide flies the chaff,
The rustling straw sends up a frequent mist
Of atoms, sparkling in the noonday beam.
Come hither, ye that press your beds of down,
And sleep not; see him sweating o'er his bread
Before he eats it.-'Tis the primal curse,
But soften'd into mercy; made the pledge
Of cheerful days and nights without a groan.
By ceaseless action all that is subsists.
Constant rotation of th' unwearied wheel
That Nature rides upon, maintains her health,

Her beauty, her fertility. She dreads

An instant's pause, and lives but while she moves
Its own revolvency upholds the World,
Winds from all quarters agitate the air,
And fit the limpid element for use,

Else noxious; oceans, rivers, lakes, and streams,
All feel the fresh'ning impulse, and are cleans'd
By restless undulation: e'en the oak

Thrives by the rude concussion of the storm:
He seems indeed indignant, and to feel

Th' impression of the blast with proud disdain,
Frowning, as if in his unconscious arm

He held the thunder: but the monarch owes
His firm stability to what he scorns,

More fix'd below, the more disturb'd above.
The law, by which all creatures else are bound,
Binds man, the Lord of all. Himself derives

No mean advantage from a kindred cause,
From strenuous toil his hours of sweetest ease.
The sedentary stretch their lazy length
When Custom bids, but no refreshment find,
For none they need: the languid eye, the cheek
Deserted of its bloom, the flaccid, shrunk,
And wither'd muscle, and the vapid soul,
Reproach their owner with that love of rest,
To which he forfeits e'en the rest he loves.
Not such the alert and active. Measure life
By its true worth, the comforts it affords,
And theirs alone seems worthy of the name.
Good health, and its associate in the most,
Good temper; spirits prompt to undertake,
And not soon spent, though in an arduous task;
The pow'rs of fancy and strong thought are theirs;
E'en age itself seems privileg'd in them

With clear exemption from its own defects.
A sparkling eye beneath a wrinkled front

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The vet'ran shows, and, gracing a gray beard With youthful smiles, descends toward the grave Sprightly, and old almost without decay.

Like a coy maiden, Ease, when courted most,
Furthest retires-an idol, at whose shrine
Who oft'nest sacrifice are favour'd least.
The love of Nature, and the scenes she draws,
s nature's dictate. Strange! there should be found,
Who, self-imprison'd in their proud saloons,
Renounce the odours of the open field
For the unscented fictions of the loom;
Vho, satisfied with only pencill'd scenes,
refer to the performance of a God

'h' inferiour wonders of an artist's hand!
ovely indeed the mimick works of Art;
ut Nature's works far lovelier. I admire,
one more admires the painter's magick skill;
Who shows me that which I shall never see,
onveys a distant country into mine,

nd throws Italian light on English walls:
ut imitative strokes can do no more

han please the eye-sweet Nature's ev'ry sense. he air salubrious of her lofty hills,

e cheering fragrance of her dewy vales, nd musick of her woods-no works of man ay rival these, these all bespeak a pow'r culiar, and exclusively her own.

neath the open sky she spreads the feast; is free to all-'tis ev'ry day renew'd; ho scorns it starves deservedly at home. e does not scorn it, who, imprison'd long some unwholesome dungeon, and a prey sallow sickness, which the vapours, dank ad clammy, of his dark abode have bred, capes at last to liberty and light:

cheek recovers soon its healthy hue;

His eye relumines its extinguish'd fires;

He walks, he leaps, he runs-is wing'd with joy,
And riots in the sweets of ev'ry breeze.

He does not scorn it, who has long endur'd
A fever's agonies, and fed on drugs.
Nor yet the mariner, his blood inflam'd
With acrid salts; his very heart athirst,
To gaze at Nature in her green array,
Upon the ship's tall side he stands, possess'd
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 low'ring eye, the petulance, the frown,
And sullen sadness, that o'ershade, distort,
And mar, the face of Beauty, when no cause
For such immeasurable wo 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 pedler'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 famish'd-finds no musick 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 paralytick, 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 dragg'd into a 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 'en 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 invet'rate 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 gayety of those,
Whose headachs nail them to a noonday bed;
And save me too from theirs, whose haggard eyes
Flash desperation, and betray their pangs

For property stripp'd off by cruel chance;
From gayety, that fills the bones with pain,
The mouth with blasphemy, the heart with wo.
The earth was made so various, that the mind
Of desultory man, studious of change,

And pleas'd with novelty, might be indulg'd.
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 shelter'd vale,

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