But are not wholesome airs, though unperfumed By roses, and clear suns, though scarcely felt, And groves, if unharmonious yet secure From clamour and whose very silence charms, To be preferred to smoke--to the eclipse That Metropolitan volcanoes make, Whose Stygian throats breathe darkness all day long, And to the stir of commerce, driving slow, And thundering loud with his ten thousand wheels?
They would be, were not madness in the head And folly in the heart; were England now What England was, plain, hospitable, kind, And undebauched. But we have bid farewell To all the virtues of those better days, And all their honest pleasures. Mansions once Knew their own masters, and laborious hands That had survived the father, served the son.
Now the legitimate and rightful lord Is but a transient guest, newly arrived And soon to be supplanted. He that saw His patrimonial timber cast its leaf, Sells the last scantling, and transfers the price To some shrewd sharper, ere it buds again.
Estates are landscapes, gazed upon awhile, Then advertised, and auctioneered away.
The country starves, and they that feed the o'er-charged And surfeited lewd town with her fair dues, By a just judgment strip and starve themselves.
The wings that waft our riches out of sight Grow on the gamester's elbows, and the alert And nimble motion of those restless joints, That never tire, soon fans them all away.
Improvement too, the idol of the age, Is fed with many a victim. Lo! he comes--The omnipotent magician, Brown, appears.
Down falls the venerable pile, the abode Of our forefathers, a grave whiskered race, But tasteless. Springs a palace in its stead, But in a distant spot; where more exposed It may enjoy the advantage of the North And aguish East, till time shall have transformed Those naked acres to a sheltering grove.
He speaks. The lake in front becomes a lawn, Woods vanish, hills subside, and valleys rise, And streams, as if created for his use, Pursue the track of his directed wand Sinuous or straight, now rapid and now slow, Now murmuring soft, now roaring in cascades, Even as he bids. The enraptured owner smiles.
'Tis finished. And yet, finished as it seems, Still wants a grace, the loveliest it could show, A mine to satisfy the enormous cost.
Drained to the last poor item of his wealth, He sighs, departs, and leaves the accomplished plan That he has touched and retouched, many a day Laboured, and many a night pursued in dreams, Just when it meets his hopes, and proves the heaven He wanted, for a wealthier to enjoy.
And now perhaps the glorious hour is come, When having no stake left, no pledge to endear Her interests, or that gives her sacred cause A moment's operation on his love, He burns with most intense and flagrant zeal To serve his country. Ministerial grace Deals him out money from the public chest, Or, if that mine be shut, some private purse Supplies his need with an usurious loan, To be refunded duly, when his vote, Well-managed, shall have earned its worthy price.
Oh, innocent compared with arts like these, Crape and cocked pistol and the whistling ball Sent through the traveller's temples! He that finds One drop of heaven's sweet mercy in his cup, Can dig, beg, rot, and perish well-content, So he may wrap himself in honest rags At his last gasp; but could not for a world Fish up his dirty and dependent bread From pools and ditches of the commonwealth, Sordid and sickening at his own success.
Ambition, avarice, penury incurred By endless riot, vanity, the lust Of pleasure and variety, despatch, As duly as the swallows disappear, The world of wandering knights and squires to town;London engulfs them all. The shark is there, And the shark's prey; the spendthrift, and the leech That sucks him. There the sycophant, and he That with bare-headed and obsequious bows Begs a warm office, doomed to a cold jail And groat per diem if his patron frown.
The levee swarms, as if in golden pomp Were charactered on every statesman's door, 'BATTERED AND BANKRUPT FORTUNES MENDED HERE.'
These are the charms that sully and eclipse The charms of nature. 'Tis the cruel gripe That lean hard-handed poverty inflicts, The hope of better things, the chance to win, The wish to shine, the thirst to be amused, That, at the sound of Winter's hoary wing, Unpeople all our counties of such herds Of fluttering, loitering, cringing, begging, loose And wanton vagrants, as make London, vast And boundless as it is, a crowded coop.
Oh thou resort and mart of all the earth, Chequered with all complexions of mankind, And spotted with all crimes; in whom I see Much that I love, and more that I admire, And all that I abhor; thou freckled fair That pleases and yet shocks me, I can laugh And I can weep, can hope, and can despond, Feel wrath and pity when I think on thee!
Ten righteous would have saved a city once, And thou hast many righteous.--Well for thee--That salt preserves thee; more corrupted else, And therefore more obnoxious at this hour Than Sodom in her day had power to be, For whom God heard his Abram plead in vain.
BOOK IV.
THE WINTER EVENING.
Hark! 'tis the twanging horn o'er yonder bridge, That with its wearisome but needful length Bestrides the wintry flood, in which the moon Sees her unwrinkled face reflected bright;--He comes, the herald of a noisy world, With spattered boots, strapped waist, and frozen locks, News from all nations lumbering at his back.
True to his charge the close-packed load behind, Yet careless what he brings, his one concern Is to conduct it to the destined inn, And, having dropped the expected bag--pass on.
He whistles as he goes, light-hearted wretch, Cold and yet cheerful: messenger of grief Perhaps to thousands, and of joy to some;To him indifferent whether grief or joy.
