Pursue the track of his directing 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 finish'd! And yet finish'd as it seems,
Still wants a grace, the loveliest it could show,
A mine to satisfy the enormous cost.

Drain'd to the last poor item of his wealth,

780

He sighs, departs, and leaves the accomplish'd plan 785
That he has touch'd, retouch'd, many a long day
Labour'd, and many a night pursued in dreams,
Just when it meets his hopes, and proves the heaven
He wanted, for a wealthier to enjoy 28.

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 29,
Well-managed, shall have earn'd its worthy price.
Oh innocent compared with arts like these,
Crape and cock'd 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

27 The pile is finish'd; every toil is past,
And full perfection is arrived at last;

When lo! my Lord to some small corner runs, And leaves state rooms to strangers and to duns. 28 The man who builds, and wants therewith to pay, Provides a home from which to run away.

Young. Satire i.

29 When men grow great from their revenue spent, And fly from bailiffs into parliament.

790

795

800

805

Young. Satire i.

From pools and ditches of the commonwealth,
Sordid and sickening at his own success.

Ambition, avarice, penury incurr❜d.
By endless riot, vanity, the lust
Of pleasure and variety, dispatch,
As duly as the swallows disappear,

The world of wandering knights and 'squires to town.
London ingulfs 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, doom'd to a cold jail

810

816

820

And groat per diem if his patron frown.

The levee swarms, as if in golden pomp

Were character'd on every statesman's door,

825

"BATTER'D 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

830

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,
Checquer'd 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,

835

840

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,

845

For whom God heard his Abraham plead in vain.

THE TASK.

BOOK IV.

ARGUMENT.

The post comes in. The newspaper is read. The world contemplated at a distance. Address to Winter. The amusements of a rural winter evening compared with the fashionable ones. Address to Evening. A brown study. Fall of snow in the evening. The waggoner. A poor familypiece. The rural thief. Public houses. The multitude of them censured. The farmer's daughter, what she was. What she is. The simplicity of country manners almost lost. Causes of the change. Desertion of the country by the rich. Neglect of magistrates. The militia principally in fault. The new recruit, and his transformation. Reflection on bodies corporate. The love of rural objects natural to all, and never to be totally extinguished.

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.

5

With spatter'd boots, strapp'd waist, and frozen locks,
News from all nations lumbering at his back.

True to his charge the close-pack'd load behind,
Yet careless what he brings, his one concern
Is to conduct it to the destined inn,

And having dropp'd 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.
Houses in ashes, and the fall of stocks,

10

15

Births, deaths, and marriages, epistles wet

With tears that trickled down the writer's cheeks
Fast as the periods from his fluent quill,

Or charged with amorous sighs of absent swains
Or nymphs responsive, equally affect

His horse and him, unconscious of them all.
But oh the important budget! usher'd in
With such heart-shaking music, who can say
What are its tidings? Have our troops awaked?
Or do they still, as if with opium drugg'd,
Snore to the murmurs of the Atlantic wave?
Is India free? and does she wear her plumed
And jewelled turban with a smile of peace,
Or do we grind her still? The grand debate,
The popular harangue, the tart reply,
The logic and the wisdom and the wit
And the loud laugh-I long to know them all;
I burn to set the imprison'd wranglers free,
And give them voice and utterance once again.
Now stir the fire, and close the shutters fast,
Let fall the curtains, wheel the sofa round,
And while the bubbling and loud-hissing urn
Throws up a steamy column, and the cups
That cheer but not inebriate, wait on each,
So let us welcome peaceful evening in.
Not such his evening, who with shining face
Sweats in the crowded theatre, and squeezed
And bored with elbow-points through both his sides,
Out-scolds the ranting actor on the stage.
Nor his, who patient stands till his feet throb
And his head thumps, to feed upon the breath
Of patriots bursting with heroic rage,

Or placemen, all tranquillity and smiles.
This folio of four pages, happy work!

50

Which not even critics criticise, that holds

Inquisitive attention while I read

Fast bound in chains of silence, which the fair,

Though eloquent themselves, yet fear to break,
What is it but a map of busy life,

55

Its fluctuations and its vast concerns?

Here runs the mountainous and craggy ridge

That tempts ambition'. On the summit, see,
The seals of office glitter in his eyes;

He climbs, he pants, he grasps them. At his heels,
Close at his heels a demagogue ascends,

And with a dexterous jerk soon twists him down
And wins them, but to lose them in his turn
Here rills of oily eloquence in soft
Mæanders lubricate the course they take;
The modest speaker is ashamed and grieved
To engross a moment's notice, and yet begs,
Begs a propitious ear for his poor thoughts,
However trivial all that he conceives.
Sweet bashfulness! it claims, at least, this praise,
The dearth of information and good sense
That it foretells us, always comes to pass.
Cataracts of declamation thunder here,
There forests of no meaning spread the page
In which all comprehension wanders lost;
While fields of pleasantry amuse us there,
descants on a nation's woes.

With merry
The rest appears a wilderness of strange

But gay confusion, roses for the cheeks

And lilies for the brows of faded age,

80

Teeth for the toothless, ringlets for the bald,

Heaven, earth, and ocean plunder'd of their sweets,

Nectareous essences, Olympian dews,

Sermons and city feasts and favourite airs,

Ethereal journeys, submarine exploits,
And Katterfelto with his hair on end

85

1

2

At his own wonders, wondering for his bread.
'Tis pleasant through the loop-holes of retreat3
To peep at such a world. To see the stir

Ambition this shall tempt to rise,

Then whirl the wretch from high. Gray. Eton Coll.
When io! push'd up to power, and crown'd their cares,
In comes another set, and kicketh them down stairs.
Castle of Indolence. Stanza liv.

3 The world is a comedy, and I know no securer box from which to behold it than a safe solitude, and it is easier to feel than to express the pleasure which may be taken in standing aloof and contemplating the reelings of the multitude, the eccentric motions of great men, and how fate recreates itself in their ruin.-Sir G. Mackenzie's Moral Essays, 139.