For the unfcented fictions of the loom;
Who, fatisfied with only pencil'd scenes,
Prefer to the performance of a God
Th' 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 fee,
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 ev'ry sense.
The air falubrious 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 pow'r
Peculiar, and exclusively her own.
Beneath the open sky she spreads the feast;
'Tis free to all-'tis ev'ry day renew'd;
Who scorns it starves deservedly at home.
He does not scorn it, who, imprifon'd long
In fome unwholesome dungeon, and a prey
To fallow fickness, which the vapours, dank
And clammy, of his dark abode have bred,
Escapes at last to liberty and light:
His cheek recovers foon its healthful 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 fide he stands, poffefs'd
With vifions prompted by intense defire:
Fair fields appear below, such as he left
Far diftant, fuch as he would die to find-
He feeks them headlong, and is seen no more.
The spleen is feldom felt where Flora reigns;
The low'ring eye, the petulance, the frown,
And fullen fadness, that o'ershade, distort,
And mar, the face of beauty, when no cause
For fuch immeasurable wo appears,
These Flora banishes, and gives the fair
Sweet smiles, and bloom less tranfient than her own.
It is the constant revolution, stale
And tasteless, of the fame repeated joys,
That palls and fatiates, 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 feaft
Is famifh'd-finds no music in the fong,
No smartness in the jest; and wonders why.
Yet thousands still defire 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 fort,
Her mingled suits and sequences; and fits,
Spectatress both and spectacle, a fad
And filent cypher, while her proxy plays.
Others are dragg'd into the crowded room
Between fupporters; and, once feated, fit,
Through downright inability to rife,
Till the ftout bearers lift the corpfe again.
These speak a loud memento. Yet ev'n these
Themselves love life, and cling to it, as he
That overhangs a torrent to a twig.
They love it, and yet loath it; fear to die,
Yet scorn the purposes for which they live.
• Then wherefore not renounce them? No-the dread,
The flavish dread of folitude, 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
That dries his feathers, faturate with dew,
Beneath the rosy cloud, while yet the beams
Of day-fpring overshoot his humble nest,
The peasant too, a witness of his fong,
Himself a fongster, is as gay as he.
But save me from the gaiety of those
Whose head-aches nail them to a noon-day bed;
And fave me too from their's whose haggard eyes
Flash desperation, and betray their pangs
For property stripp'd off by cruel chance;
From gaiety that fills the bones with pain,
The mouth with blafphemy, the heart with woe,
The earth was made so various, that the mind Of defultory man, studious of change, And pleas'd with novelty, might be indulg'd. Profpects, however lovely, may be seen
Till half their beauties fade; the weary fight, Too well acquainted with their smiles, slides off, Faftidious, seeking less familiar scenes.
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