Shot through the boughs, it dances as they dance.
Shadow and sunshine intermingling quick,
And darkening and enlightening, as the leaves
Play wanton, every moment, every spot. [cheered,
And now, with nerves new-braced and spirits
We tread the wilderness, whose well-rolled walks,
With curvature of slow and easy sweep
Deception innocent-give ample space
To narrow bounds.

THE THRESHER. LABOR.

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 destined 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."T is the primal curse,
But softened into mercy; made the pledge
Of cheerful days, and nights without a groan.

PERPETUAL ACTIVITY IN NATURE. — UTILITY OF WINDS.-
THE OAK.

By ceaseless action all that is subsists.
Constant rotation of the 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 freshening impulse, and are cleansed
By restless undulation: e'en the oak
Thrives by the rude concussion of the storm:
He seems indeed indignant, and to feel
The 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 fixed below, the more disturbed above.

TOIL A BLESSING. — HEALTH. HEALTHY OLD AGE. EASE.

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 withered 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 powers of fancy and strong thought are theirs ;
E'en age itself seems privileged in them,
With clear exemption from its own defects.
A sparkling eye beneath a wrinkled front
The veteran shows, and, gracing a gray beard
With youthful smiles, descends towards the grave
Sprightly, and old almost without decay.

Like a coy maiden, ease, when courted most,
Furthest retires- an idol, at whose shrine
Who oftenest sacrifice are favored least.

SUPERIORITY OF NATURE TO ART.

The love of Nature, and the scenes she draws,
Is Nature's dictate. Strange! there should be found,
Who, self-imprisoned in their proud saloons,
Renounce the odors of the open field
For the unscented fictions of the loom;
Who, satisfied with only pencilled scenes,
Prefer to the performance of a God
The inferior wonders of an artist's hand!
Lovely indeed the mimic works of Art;
But Nature's works far lovelier. I admire,
None more admires, the painter's magic skill,
Who shows me that which I shall never see,
Conveys a distant country into mine,

And throws Italian light on English walls:
But imitative strokes can do no more

Than please the eye-sweet Nature's every sense.

The air salubrious of her lofty hills,

The cheering fragrance of her dewy vales,
And music of her woods -no works of man
May rival these; these all bespeak a power
Peculiar, and exclusively her own.
Beneath the open sky she spreads the feast;
"T is free to all—'t is every day renewed ;
Who scorns it starves deservedly at home.

ENJOYMENT OF NATURE BY THE RELEASED PRISONER; THE
CONVALESCENT; BY THE MARINER CRAZED WITH THE LONG-
ING FOR LAND SCENERY.

He does not scorn it, who, imprisoned long
In some unwholesome dungeon, and a prey
To sallow sickness, which the vapors, dank
And clammy, of his dark abode have bred,
Escapes at last to liberty and light:
His cheek recovers soon its healthful hue;
His eye relumines its extinguished fires;

He walks, he leaps, he runs- - is winged with joy,
And riots in the sweets of every breeze.

He does not scorn it, who has long endured

A fever's agonies, and fed on drugs;
Nor yet the mariner, his blood inflamed
With acrid salts: his very heart athirst,
To gaze at nature in her green array,
Upon the ship's tall side he stands, possessed
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 LOVE OF LIFE; HOWEVER APPARENTLY UNDESIRABLE.-
INVETERATE CARD-PLAYERS.

Yet thousands still desire to journey on,
Though halt, and weary of the path they tread.
The paralytic, 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 dragged into the 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 even 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 inveterate habits, all forbid.

THE TRULY GAY. — THE LARK. THE PEASANT.THE FASHIONABLE AND VICIOUS GAY.

Whom call we gay? That honor 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 headaches nail them to a noonday bed; And save me too from theirs, whose haggard eyes Flash desperation, and betray their pangs For property stripped off by cruel chance ; From gayety, that fills the bones with pain, The mouth with blasphemy, the heart with woe.

NATURE'S VARIETY ADAPTED TO MAN'S LOVE OF CHANGE.THE SEA-CLIFF; THE QUIET, INLAND VALE.

The earth was made so various, that the mind Of desultory man, studious of change, And pleased with novelty, might be indulged. 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 sheltered vale, Where frequent hedges intercept the eye, Delight us; happy to renounce a while, Not senseless of its charms, what still we love, That such short absence may endear it more. Then forests, or the savage rock, may please, That hides the sea-mew in his hollow clefts Above the reach of man. His hoary head, Conspicuous many a league, the mariner Bound homeward, and in hope already there, Greets with three cheers exulting. At his waist A girdle of half-withered shrubs he shows, And at his feet the baffled billows die. The common, overgrown with fern, and rough With prickly gorse, that shapeless and deformed, And dangerous to the touch, has yet its bloom, And decks itself with ornaments of gold, Yields no unpleasing ramble; there the turf Smells fresh, and rich in odoriferous herbs And fungous fruits of earth, regales the sense With luxury of unexpected sweets.

CRAZY KATE.

There often wanders one, whom better days Saw better clad, in cloak of satin trimmed With lace, and hat with splendid riband bound. A serving maid was she, and fell in love With one who left her, went to sea, and died. Her fancy followed him through foaming waves To distant shores; and she would sit and weep At what a sailor suffers; fancy too, Delusive most where warmest wishes are, Would oft anticipate his glad return, And dream of transports she was not to know. She heard the doleful tidings of his deathAnd never smiled again! and now she roams The dreary waste; there spends the live-long day, And there, unless when charity forbids, The live-long night. A tattered apron hides, Worn as a cloak, and hardly hides, a gown More tattered still; and both but ill conceal A bosom heaved with never-ceasing sighs. She begs an idle pin of all she meets, And hoards them in her sleeve; but needful food, Though pressed with hunger oft, or comelier clothes, Though pinched with cold, asks never. - Kate is crazed.

THE GYPSY CAMP.

I see a column of slow-rising smoke O'ertop the lofty wood that skirts the wild.

A vagabond and useless tribe there eat
Their miserable meal. A kettle, slung
Between two poles upon a stick transverse,
Receives the morsel- flesh obscene of dog,
Or vermin, or at best of cock purloined

From his accustomed perch. Hard faring race!
They pick their fuel out of every hedge, [quenched
Which, kindled with dry leaves, just saves un-
The spark of life. The sportive wind blows wide
Their fluttering rags, and shows a tawny skin,
The vellum of the pedigree they claim.

GYPSY ARTS; SLOTH AND JOLLITY.

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 brutalize 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 honorable 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 gayety of heart enjoy The houseless rovers of the sylvan world; And, breathing wholesome air, and wandering much, Need other physic none to heal th' effects Of loathsome diet, penury, and cold.

ADVANTAGES OF CIVILIZATION OVER BARBARISM. THE INDIANS, PATAGONIANS. ISLANDERS.

[learn,

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 learned, though slow to 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 th' Antarctic. Even the favored 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.

OMAI, THE ISLANDER.

1

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, [found
And homestall thatched with leaves. But hast thou
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 thy foot
If ever it has washed our distant shore.

HOMESICK LONGINGS OF THE ISLANDER. TRADE AND PHI

LANTHROPY.

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 climbest 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.

1 Omai.

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, 't is true, but not for naught ;
And must be bribed to compass earth again
By other hopes and richer fruits than yours.

CITIES. THEIR DISADVANTAGES AS TO VIRTUE. — LUXURY ;

VICE.

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 with most ease,
Or seen with least reproach; and virtue, taught
By frequent lapse, can hope no triumph there
Beyond th' achievement of successful flight.

LONDON ITS VICES-YET A NURSE OF THE ARTS. PAINT-
ING; SCULPTURE; ENGRAVING.

I do confess them nurseries of the arts,
In which they flourish most; where, in the beams
Of warm encouragement, and in the eye
Of public note, they reach their perfect size.
Such London is, by taste and wealth proclaimed
The fairest capital of all the world,
By riot and incontinence the worst.
There, touched by Reynolds, a dull blank becomes
A lucid mirror, in which nature sees
All her reflected features. Bacon there
Gives more than female beauty to a stone,
And Chatham's eloquence to marble lips.
Nor does the chisel occupy alone

The powers of sculpture, but the style as much;
Each province of her art her equal care.
With nice incision of her guided steel
She ploughs a brazen field, and clothes a soil
So sterile with what charms soe'er she wills,
The richest scenery and the loveliest forms.

LONDON THE HOME OF SCIENCE, COMMERCE, WEALTH.
Where finds philosophy her eagle eye,
With which she gazes at yon burning disk
Undazzled, and detects and counts his spots?
In London. Where her implements exact,
With which she calculates, computes, and scans,
All distance, motion, magnitude, and now
Measures an atom, and now girds a world?
In London. Where has commerce such a mart,
So rich, so thronged, so drained, and so supplied,
As London - opulent, enlarged, and still

Increasing London? Babylon of old
Not more the glory of the earth than she,
A more accomplished world's chief glory now.

LONDON. CERTAIN REFORMS RECOMMENDED TO HER. — PRE-
VENTION BETTER THAN REVENGE. SEVERITY TO LITTLE
AND LENITY TO GREAT KNAVES. SABBATH PROFANATION.

She has her praise. Now mark a spot or two,
That so much beauty would do well to purge ;
And show this queen of cities, that so fair
May yet be foul; so witty, yet not wise.
It is not seemly, nor of good report,
That she is slack in discipline; more prompt
Tavenge than to prevent the breach of law:
That she is rigid in denouncing death
On petty robbers, and indulges life
And liberty, and ofttimes honor too,
To peculators of the public gold;

That thieves at home must hang; but he that puts
Into his overgorged and bloated purse
The wealth of Indian provinces escapes.
Nor is it well, nor can it come to good,
That, through profane and infidel contempt
Of Holy Writ, she has presumed t'annul
And abrogate, as roundly as she may,
The total ordinance and will of God;
Advancing fashion to the post of truth,
And cent'ring all authority in modes
And customs of her own, till Sabbath rites
Have dwindled into unrespected forms,
And knees and hassocks are well-nigh divorced.

GOD MADE THE COUNTRY, MAN THE TOWN. RURAL LIFE PROMISES MOST HEALTH AND VIRTUE. IDLENESS. SIMPLE DESIRES AND JOYS OF THE COUNTRY. FOREBODINGS.

God made the country, and man made the town. What wonder, then, that health and virtue, gifts That can alone make sweet the bitter draught That life holds out to all, should most abound And least be threatened in the fields and groves? Possess ye, therefore, ye who, borne about In chariots and sedans, know no fatigue But that of idleness, and taste no scenes But such as art contrives, possess ye' still Your element; there only can ye shine; There only minds like yours can do no harm. Our groves were planted to console at noon The pensive wanderer in their shades. At eve The moonbeam, sliding softly in between The sleeping leaves, is all the light they wish, Birds warbling all the music. We can spare The splendor of your lamps: they but eclipse Our softer satellite. Your songs confound Our more harmonious notes: the thrush departs Scared, and th' offended nightingale is mute. There is a public mischief in your mirth; It plagues your country. Folly such as yours, Graced with a sword, and worthier of a fan, Has made, what enemies could ne'er have done, Our arch of empire, steadfast but for you, A mutilated structure, soon to fall.