Dangled along at the cold fingers' end
Just when the day declined, and the brown loaf
Lodged on the shelf half-eaten without sauce
Of savoury cheese, or butter costlier still,
Sleep seems their only refuge. For alas!
Where penury is felt the thought is chain'd,
And sweet colloquial pleasures are but few.
With all this thrift they thrive not.
Ingenious parsimony takes, but just
Saves the small inventory, bed and stool,
Skillet and old carved chest, from public sale.
They live, and live without extorted alms
From grudging hands, but other boast have none
To soothe their honest pride that scorns to beg,
Nor comfort else, but in their mutual love.
I praise you much, ye meek and patient pair,
For ye are worthy; chusing rather far
A dry but independent crust, hard-earn'd
And eaten with a sigh, than to endure
The rugged frowns and insolent rebuffs
Of knaves in office 22, partial in the work
Of distribution; liberal of their aid
To clamorous importunity in rags,
But oft-times deaf to suppliants who would blush
To wear a tatter'd garb however coarse,
Whom famine cannot reconcile to filth;
These ask with painful shyness, and refused
Because deserving, silently retire.
22 The insolence of office, and the spurns
That patient merit of the unworthy takes.
But be ye of good courage. Time itself
Shall much befriend you. Time shall give increase,
And all your numerous progeny well train'd,
But helpless, in few years shall find their hands,
And labour too. Meanwhile ye shall not want
What conscious of your virtues we can spare,
Nor what a wealthier than ourselves may send.
I mean the man, who, when the distant poor
Need help, denies them nothing but his name 23.
But poverty with most who whimper forth
Their long complaints, is self-inflicted woe,
The effect of laziness or sottish waste.
Now goes the nightly thief prowling abroad
For plunder; much solicitous how best
He may compensate for a day of sloth,
By works of darkness and nocturnal wrong.
Woe to the gardener's pale, the farmer's hedge
Plash'd neatly, and secured with driven stakes
Deep in the loamy bank! Uptorn by strength
Resistless in so bad a cause, but lame
To better deeds, he bundles up the spoil
An ass's burthen, and when laden most
And heaviest, light of foot steals fast away.
23 Let humble Allen, with an awkward shame,
Do good by stealth, and blush to find it fame.
Pope. Epis. to Sut.
Grand reservoirs of public happiness
Through secret streams diffusively they bless;
And while their bounties glide conceal'd from view,
Relieve our wants, and spare our blushes too.
Young. Satire vi.
Mr. Smith was the secret benefactor here alluded to.
Nor does the boarded hovel better guard
The well-stack'd pile of riven logs and roots
From his pernicious force. Nor will he leave
Unwrench'd the door however well secured,
Where chanticleer amidst his haram sleeps
In unsuspecting pomp. Twitched from the perch
He gives the princely bird with all his wives
To his voracious bag, struggling in vain,
And loudly wondering at the sudden change.
Nor this to feed his own. "Twere some excuse
Did pity of their sufferings warp aside
His principle, and tempt him into sin
For their support, so destitute. But they
Neglected pine at home, themselves, as more
Exposed than others, with less scruple made
His victims, robb'd of their defenceless all.
Cruel is all he does. 'Tis quenchless thirst
Of ruinous ebriety that prompts
His every action and imbrutes the man.
Oh for a law to noose the villain's neck
Who starves his own! who persecutes the blood
He
gave them in his children's veins, and hates
And wrongs the woman he has sworn to love.
Pass where we may, through city or through town, Village or hamlet of this merry land
Though lean and beggar'd, every twentieth pace
Conducts the unguarded nose to such a whiff
Of stale debauch forth issuing from the styes
That law has licensed, as makes temperance reel.
There sit involved and lost in curling clouds
Of Indian fume, and guzzling deep, the boor,
The lacquey, and the groom.
The craftsman there
Takes a Lethæan leave of all his toil;
Smith, cobler, joiner, he that plies the sheers,
And he that kneads the dough; all loud alike,
All learned, and all drunk. The fiddle screams
Plaintive and piteous, as it wept and wailed
Its wasted tones and harmony unheard.
Fierce the dispute whate'er the theme. While she,
Fell Discord, arbitress of such debate,
Perch'd on the sign-post, holds with even hand
Her undecisive scales 24. In this she lays
A weight of ignorance, in that, of pride,
And smiles delighted with the eternal poise.
Dire is the frequent curse and its twin sound
The cheek-distending oath, not to be praised
As ornamental, musical, polite,
Like those which modern senators employ,
Whose oath is rhetoric, and who swear for fame.
Behold the schools in which plebeian minds,
Once simple, are initiated in arts
Which some may practise with politer grace,
But none with readier skill! 'Tis here they learn 495
The road that leads from competence and peace
To indigence and rapine; till at last
Society, grown weary of the load,
Shakes her encumber'd lap, and casts them out.
But censure profits little. Vain the attempt
To advertise in verse a public pest,
That, like the filth with which the peasant feeds
His hungry acres, stinks, and is of use.
And by decision more embroils the fray.
The excise is fatten'd with the rich result
Of all this riot. And ten thousand casks,
For ever dribbling out their base contents,
Touch'd by the Midas finger of the state,
Bleed gold for Ministers to sport away.
Drink and be mad then! 'Tis your country bids.
Gloriously drunk obey the important call;
Her cause demands the assistance of
Ye all can swallow, and she asks no more.
Would I had fallen upon those happier days
That poets celebrate! those golden times
And those Arcadian scenes that Maro sings,
And Sydney, warbler of poetic prose.
Nymphs were Dianas then, and swains had hearts
That felt their virtues. Innocence it seems,
From courts dismiss'd, found shelter in the groves.
The footsteps of simplicity impress'd
Upon the yielding herbage (so they sing,)
Then were not all effaced. Then speech profane
And manners profligate were rarely found,
Observed as prodigies, and soon reclaim'd.
Vain wish! those days were never. Airy dreams
Sat for the picture; and the poet's hand
Imparting substance to an empty shade,
Imposed a gay delirium for a truth.
Grant it. I still must envy them an age
That favour'd such a dream, in days like these
Impossible, when virtue is so scarce,
That to suppose a scene where she presides
Is tramontane, and stumbles all belief.
No. We are polish'd now. The rural lass,
Whom once her virgin modesty and grace,
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