No narrow bounds; her cause engages him In those that suffer it, a sordid mind,
Wherever pleaded. 'Tis the cause of man. Bestial, a meagre intellect, unfit
There dwell the most forlorn of human kind, To be the tenant of man's noble form.
Immured though unaccused, condemned untried, Thee therefore still, blame-worthy as thou art,
Cruelly spared, and hopeless of escape. With all thy loss of empire, and though squeezed
There, like the visionary emblem seen

By public exigence, till annual food
By him of Babylon, life stands a stump, Falls for the craving hunger of the state,
And, filleted about with hoops of brass, Thee I account still happy, and the chief
Still lives, though all his pleasant boughs are gone Among the nations, seeing thou art free;
To count the hour-bell and expect no change; My native nook of earth! Thy clime is rude,
And ever as the sullen sound is heard,

Replete with vapours, and disposes much Still to reflect, that, though a joyless note All hearts to sadness, and none more than mine: To him, whose moments all have one dull pace, Thine unadulterate manners are less soft Ten thousand rovers in the world at large And plausible than social life requires. Account it music; that it summons some And thou hast need of discipline and art, To theatre, or jocund feast or ball;

To give thee what politer France receives The wearied hireling finds it a release

From nature's bounty—that humane address From labour; and the lover, who has chid And sweetness, without which no pleasure is Its long delay, feels every welcome stroke In converse, either starved by cold reserve, Upon his heart-strings, trembling with delight. Or flushed with fierce dispute, a senseless brawl. To fly for refuge from distracting thought Yet being free I love thee: for the sake To such amusements as ingenious wo

Of that one feature can be well content, Contrives, hard-shifting, and without her tools Disgraced as thou hast been, poor as thou art, To read engraven on the mouldy walls,

To seek no sublunary rest beside. In staggering types, his predecessor's tale, But, once enslaved, farewell! I could endure A sad memorial, and subjoin his own

Chains no where patiently; and chains at home, To turn purvevor to an overgorged

Where I am free by birthright, not at all. And bloated spider, till the pampered pest Then what were left of roughness in the grain Is made familiar, watches his approach, Of British natures, wanting its excuse Comes at his call, and serves him for a friend- That it belongs to freemen, would disgust To wear out time in numbering to and fro And shock me. I should then with double pain The studs, that thick emboss his iron door; Feel all the rigour of thy fickle clime; Then downward and then upward, then aslant And if I must bewail the blessing lost, And then alternate; with a sickly hope For which our Hampdens and our Sidneys bled, By dint of change to give his tasteless task I would at least bewail it under skies Some relish; till the sum, exactly found Milder, among a people less austere; In all directions, he begins again

In scenes, which, having never known me free, Oh comfortless existence! hemmed around Would not reproach me with the loss I felt. With woes, which who that suffers would not Do I forebode impossible events, kneel

And tremble at vain dreams? Heaven grant I may! And beg for exile, or the pangs of death? But th' age of virtuous politics is past, That man should thus encroach on fellow-man, And we are deep in that of cold pretence. Abridge him of his just and native rights, Patriots are grown too shrewd to be sincere, Eradicate him, tear him from his hold

And we too wise to trust them. He that takes U pon the endearments of domestic life

Deep in his soft credulity the stamp And social, nip his fruitfulness and use, Designed by loud declaimers on the part And doom him for perhaps a heedless word Of liberty, themselves the slaves of lust, To barrenness, and solitude, and tears,

Incurs derision for his easy faith, Moves indignation, makes the name of king And lack of knowledge, and with cause enough: (Of king whom such prerogative can please) For when was public virtue to be found As dreadful as the Manichean god :

Where private was not? Can he love the whole Adored through fear, strong only to destroy. Who loves no part? He be a nation's friend,

*Tis liberty alone that gives the flower Who is in truth the friend of no man there? Of fleeting life its lustre and perfume;

Can he be strenuous in his country's cause, And we are weeds without it. All constraint, Who slights the charities, for whose dear sake Except what wisdom lays, on evil men, That country, if at all, must be beloved ? Is evil: hurts the faculties, impedes

'Tis therefore sober and good men are sad Their progress in the road of science, blinds For England's glory, seeing it wax pale The eyesight of Discovery; and begets, And sickly, while her champions wear their hearts

So loose to private duty, that no brain,

In other heavens than these that we behold,
Healthful and undisturbed by factious fumes, And fade not. There is Paradise that fears
Can dream them trusty to the general weal. No forfeiture, and of its fruits he sends
Such were not they of old, whose tempered blades Large prelibation oft to saints below.
Dispersed the shackles of usurped control, Of these the first in order, and the pledge,
And hewed them link from link; then Albion's sons And confident assurance of the rest,
Were sons indeed: they felt a filial heast Is liberty; a flight into his arms,
Beat high within them at a mother's wrongs; Ere yet morality's fine threads give way,
And, shining each in his domestic sphere, A clear escape from tyrannizing lust,
Shone brighter still, once called to public view. And full immunity from penal wo.
'Tis therefore many, whose sequestered lot Chains are the portion of revolted man,
Forbids their interference, looking on,

Stripes and a dungeon; and his body serves
Anticipate perforcè some dire event;

The triple purpose. In that sickly, foul,
And, seeing the old castle of the state,

Opprobrious residence he finds them all.
That promised once more firmness, so assailed, Propense his heart to idols, he is held
That all its tempest-beaten turrets shake, In silly dotage on created things,
Stand motionless expectants of its fall.

Careless of their Creator. And that low
All has its date below; the fatal hour

And sordid gravitation of his powers
Was registered in heaven ere time began. To a vile clod so draws him, with such force
We turn to dust, and all our mightiest works Resistless from the centre he should seek,
Die too: the deep foundations that we lay, That he at last forgets it. All his hopes
Time ploughs them up, and not a trace remains. Tend downward; his ambition is to sink,
We build with what we deem eternal rock: To reach a depth profounder still, and still
A distant age asks where the fabric stood; Profounder, in the fathomless abyss
And in the dust, sifted and searched in vain, Of folly, plunging in pursuit of death.
The undiscoverable secret sleeps.

But ere he gain the comfortless repose
But there is yet a liberty, unsung

He seeks, and acquiescence of his soul By poets, and by senators unpraised,

In Heaven-renouncing exile, he endures Which monarchs can not grant, nor all the powers What does he not, from lusts opposed in vain, Of earth and hell confederate take away: And self-reproaching conscience? He foresees A liberty, which persecution, fraud,

The fatal issue to his health, fame, peace, Oppression, prisons, have no power to bind; Fortune and dignity; the loss of all Which whoso tastes can be enslaved no more. That can ennoble man, and make frail life, 'Tis liberty of heart derived from Heaven, Short as it is, supportable. Still worse, Bought with his blood, who gave it to mankind, Far worse than all the plagues, with which his And sealed with the same token. It is held

sins By charter, and that charter sanctioned sure Infect his happiest moments, he forebodes By th' unimpeachable and awful oath

Ages of hopeless misery. Future death, And promise of a God. His other gifts And death still future. Not a hasty stroke, All bear the royal stamp, that speaks them his, Like that which sends him to the dusty grave; And are august; but this transcends them all. But unrepealable enduring death. His other works, the visible display

Scripture is still a trumpet to his fears ; Of all creating energy and might,

What none can prove a forgery may be true; Are grand, no doubt, and worthy of the word, What none but bad men wish exploded must. That finding an interminable space

That scruple checks him. Riot is not loud Unoccupied, has filled the void so well, Nor drunk enough to drown it. In the midst And made so sparkling what was dark before. Of laughter his compunctions are sincere; But these are not his glory. Man, 'tis true, And he abhors the jest by which he shines. Smit with the beauty of so fair a scene,

Remorse begets reform. His master lust Might well suppose th' artificer divine

Falls first before his resolute rebuke, Meant it eternal, had he not himself

And seems dethroned and vanquished. Peace Pronounced it transient, glorious as it is,

ensues, And still designing a more glorious far,

But spurious and short-lived; the puny child
Doomed it as insufficient for his praise. Of self-congratulating Pride, begot
These therefore are occasional, and pass; On fancied Innocence. Again he falls,
Formed for the confutation of the fool,

And fights again; but finds his best essay
Whose lying heart disputes against a God; A presage ominious, portending still
That office served, they must be swept away. Its own dishonour by a worse relapse,
Not so the labours of his love; they shine Till Nature, unavailing Nature, foiled

So oft, and wearied in the vain attempt, And chills and darkens a wide-wandering soul.
Scoffs at her own performance. Reason now The still small voice is wanted. He must speak,
Takes part with appetite, and pleads the cause Whose word leaps forth at once to its effect;
Perversely, which of late she so condemned; Who calls for things that are not, and they come.
With shallow shifts and old devices, worn Grace makes the slave a freeman. 'Tis a change,
And tattered in the service of debauch, That turns to ridicule the turgid speech
Covering his shame from his offended sight. And stately tone of moralists, who boast,
Hath God indeed given appetites to man,

As if, like him of fabulous renown,
And stored the earth so 'plenteously with means, They had indeed ability to smooth
To gratify the hunger of his wish;

The shag of savage nature, and were each
" And doth he reprobate, and will he damn An Orpheus, and omnipotent in song:
The use of his own bounty? making first But transformation of a postate man
So frail a kind, and then enacting laws

From fool to wise, from earthly to divine,
So strict, that less than perfect must despair? Is work for him that made him. He alone,
Falsehood! which whoso but suspects of truth And he by means in philosophic eyes
Dishonours God, and makes a slave of man. Trivial and worthy of disdain, achieves
Do they themselves, who undertake for hire The wonder; humanizing what is brute
The teacher's office, and dispense at large In the lost kind, extracting from the lips
Their weekly dole of edifying strains,

Of asps their venom, overpowering strength
Attend to their own music? have they faith By weakness, and hostility by love.
In what with such solemnity of tone

Patriots have toiled, and in their country's cause
And gesture they propound to our belief? Bled nobly; and their deeds, as they deserve,
Nay-conduct hath the loudest 'tongue. The Receive proud recompense. We give in charge
voice

Their names to the sweet lyre. Th' historic muse, Is but an instrument, on which the priest Proud of the treasure, marches with it down May play what tune he pleases. In the deed, To latest-times; and Sculpture, in her turn, The unequivocal, authentic deed,

Gives bond in stone and ever-during brass We find sound argument, we read the heart." To guard them, and t'immortalize her trust;. Such reasonings (if that name must needs be- But fairer wreaths are due, though never paid, long

To those, who, posted at the shrine of Truth, T'excuses in which reason has no part) Have fallen in her defence. A patriot's blood, Serve to compose a spirit well inclined

Well spent in such a strife, may earn indeed, To live on terms of amity with vice,

And for a time ensure, to his loved land And sin without disturbance. Often urged The sweets of liberty and equal laws; (As often as libidinous discourse

But martyrs struggle for a brighter prize, Exhausted, he resorts to solemn themes And win it with more pain. Their blood is shed Of theological and grave import)

In confirmation of the noblest claim, They gain at last his unreserved assent; Our claim to feed upon immortal truth, Till, hardened his heart's temper in the forge To walk with God, to be divinely free, Of lust, and the anvil of despair,

To soar, and to anticipate the skies. He slights the strokes of conscience. Nothing Yet few remember them. They lived unknown, moves,

Till persecution dragged them into fame, Or nothing much, his constancy in ill;

And chased them up to Heaven. Their ashes flew Vain tampering has but fostered his disease; -No marble tells us whither. With their name 'Tis desperate, and he sleeps the sleep of death. No bard embalms and sanctifies his song: Haste, now, philosopher, and set him free. And history, so warm on meaner themes, Charm the deaf serpent wisely. Make him hear Is cold on this. She execrates indeed Of rectitude and fitness, moral truth

The tyranny that doomed them to the fire, How lovely, and the moral sense how sure, But gives the glorious sufferers little praise. * Consulted' and obeyed, to guide his steps

He is the freeman whom the truth makes free, Directly to the first and only fair.

And all are slaves besides. There's not a chain, Spare not in such a cause. Spend all the powers That hellish foes, confederate for his harm, Of rant and rhapsody in virtue’s praise : Can wind around him, but he casts it off Be most sublimely good, verbosely grand, With as much ease as Samson his green withs. And with poetic trappings grace thy prose, He looks abroad into the varied field Til it unmantle all the pride of verse.- Of nature, and though poor perhaps, compared Ah, tinkling cymbal, and high-sounding brass, With those whose mansions glitter in his sight, Smitten in vain! such music can not charm The eclipse, that intercepts truth's heavenly beam,

See Hume.

Calls the delightful scenery all his own. To read his wonders, in whose thought the world,
His are the mountains, and the valleys his, Fair as it is, existed ere it was.
And the resplendent rivers, his t' enjoy Not for his own sake merely, but for his
With a propriety that none can feel,

Much more, who fashioned it, he gives it praise;
But who, with filial confidence inspired, Praise that from Earth resulting, as it ought
Can lift to heaven an unpresumptuous eye, To earth's acknowledged Sovereign, finds at once
And smiling say—“My father made them all!" Its only just proprietor in Him.
Are they not his by a peculiar right,

The soul that sees him, or receives sublimed And by an emphasis of interest his,

New faculties, or learns at least t'employ Whose eye they fill with tears of holy joy, More worthily the powers she owned before, Whose heart with praise, and whose exalted mind Discerns in all things what, with stupid gaze With worthy thoughts of that unwearied love, Of ignorance, till then she overlooked That planned, and built, and still upholds, a world A ray of heavenly light, gilding all forms So clothed with beauty for rebellious man? Terrestrial in the vast and the minute; Yes--ye may fill your garners, ye that reap The unambiguous footsteps of the God. The loaded soil, and ye may waste much good Who gives its lustre to an insect's wing, In senseless riot; but ye will not find

And wheels his throne upon the rolling worlds. In feast, or in the chase, in song or dance, Much conversant with Heaven, she often holds A liberty like his, who unimpeached

With those fair ministers of light to man, Of usurpation, and to no man's wrong, That fill the skies nightly with silent pomp, Appropriates nature as his Father's work, Sweet conference. Inquires what strains were And has a richer use of yours than you.

they He is indeed a freeman. Free by birth ; With which Heaven rang, when every star in Of no mean city; planned or ere the hills

haste
Were built, the fountains opened, or the sea To gratulate the new-created earth,
With all his roaring multitude of waves. Sent forth a voice, and all the sons of God
His freedom is the same in every state; Shouted for joy.—“Tell me, ye shining hosts,
And no condition of this changeful life, That navigate a sea that knows no storms,
So manifold in cares, whose every day

Beneath a vault unsullied with a cloud,
Brings its own evil with it, makes it less : If from your elevation, whence ye view
For he has wings, that neither sickness, pain, Distinctly scenes invisible to man,
Nor penury, can cripple or confine.

And systems of whose birth no tidings yet
No nook so narrow but he spreads them there Have reached this nether world, ye spy a race
With ease, and is at large. Th'oppressor holds Favoured as ours; transgressors from the womb,
His body bound, but knows not what a range And hasting to a grave, yet doomed to rise,
His spirit takes unconscious of a chain; And to possess a brighter heaven than yours?
And that to bind him is a vain attempt,

As one, who, long detained on foreign shores, Whom God delights in, and in whom he dwells. Pants to return, and when he sees afar

Acquaint thyself with God, if thou wouldst taste His country's weather-bleached and battered rocks His works. Admitted once to his embrace, From the green wave

emerging, darts an eye Thou shalt perceive that thou wast blind before ; Radiant with joy towards the happy land; Thine eye shall be instructed; and thine heart So I with animated hopes behold, Made pure shall relish, with divine delight, And many an aching wish, your beamy fires, Till then unfelt, what hands divine have wrought. That show. like beacons in the blue abyss, Brutes graze the mountain top, with faces prone, Ordained to guide th’embodied spirit home And eyes intent upon the scanty herb

From toilsome life to never-ending rest. It yields them; or, recumbent on its brow, Love kindles as I gaze. I feel desires Ruminate heedless of the scene outspread That give assurance of their own success, Beneath, beyond, and stretching far away And that, infused from Heaven, must thither From inland regions to the distant main.

tend." Man views it and admires; but rests content So reads he nature, whom the lamp of truth With what he views. The landscape has his Illuminates. Thy lamp, mysterious Word! praise,

Which whoso sees no longer wanders lost, But not its Author. Unconcerned who formed with intellects bemazed in endless doubt, The paradise he sees, he finds it such,

But runs the road of wisdom. Thou hast built, And such well-pleased to find it, asks no more. With means that were not till by thee employed, Not so the mind, that has been touched from Worlds that had never been, hadst thou in strength Heaven.

Been less, or less benevolent than strong. And in the school of sacred wisdom taught They are thy witnesses, who speak thy power

a

And goodness infinite, but speak in ears Thy purity, till pure as thou art pure,
That hear not, or receive not their report. Made such by thee, we love thee for thy cause,
In vain thy creatures testify of thee,

For which we shunned and hated thee before.
Till thou proclaim thyself. Theirs is indeed Then we are free. Then liberty, like day,
A teaching voice; but 'tis the praise of thine, Breaks on the soul, and by a flash from Heaven
That whom it teaches it makes prompt to learn, Fires all the faculties with glorious joy.
And with the boon gives talents for its use. A voice is heard, that mortal ears hear not,
Till thou art heard, imaginations vain

Till thou hast touched them; 'tis the voice of Possess the heart, and fables false as hell;

song, Yet, deemed oracular, lure down to death. A loud hosanna sent from all thy works, The uninformed and heedless souls of men. Which he that hears it with a shout repeats, We give to chance, blind chance, ourselves as And adds his rapture to the general praise. blind,

In that blest moment Nature, throwing wide
The glory of thy work which yet appears Her veil opaque, discloses with a smile
Perfect and unimpeachable of blame,

The author of her beauties, who, retired
Challenging human scrutiny, and proved Behind his own creation, works unseen
Then skilful most when most severely judged. By the impure, and hears his power denied.
But chance is not; or is not where thou reign'st: Thou art the source and centre of all minds,
Thy providence forbids that fickle power Their only point of rest, eternal Word!
(If power she be, that works but to confound) From thee departing they are lost, and rove
To mix her wild vagaries with thy laws. At random without honour, hope, or peace.
Yet thus we dote, refusing while we can

From thee is all that soothes the life of man,
Instruction, and inventing to ourselves His high endeavour, and his glad success,
Guds such as guilt makes welcome; gods that His strength to suffer, and his will to serve.
sleep,

But 0 thou bounteous Giver of all good, Or disregard our follies, or that sit

Thou art of all thy gifts thyself the crown! Amused spectators of this bustling stage. Give what thou canst, without thee we are poor, Thee we reject, unable to abide

And with thee rich, take what thou wilt away.

The Task.

BOOK VI.

THE WINTER WALK AT NOON.

ARGUMENT. Bells at a distance. --Their effect.- A fine noon in winter. A sheltered walk. - Meditation better than books --Our familiarity with the course of nature makes it appear less wonderful thun it is.- The transformation that spring effects in a shrubbery described.-A mistake concerning the course of nature corrected. ---Gorl maintains it by an unremitted act. The amu-ements fähionable at this hour of the day reproved. —Animals happy, a delightful sight.- Origin of crucliy to animals,

- Thas it is a great crime proved from Scripture." That proof illustrate l by, a tale.--A line drawn between the lawful and unlawful destruction of them.--Their good and useful properties insisted on. - Apoloty for the encomiums bestowed by the author on animals. ---Instances of man's extravagın praise of min.-The groans of the creation shall have an end.—A view takrn of the restoration of all things.-An invocation and an invitation of him, who shall bring it to pass. --The retired man vindicaied from the charge of uselessness.-Conclusion.

There is in souls a sympathy with sounds; And with it all its pleasures and its pains. And as the mind is pitched the car is pleased Such comprehensive views the spirit takes, With melting airs of martial, brisk or grave;

That in a few short moments I retrace Some chord in unison with what we hear (As in a map the voyager his course) Is touched within us, and the heart replies. The windings of my way through many years. How soft the music of those village bells, Short as in retrospect the journey seems, Falling at intervals upon the ear

It seemed not always short; the rugged path, In cadence sweet; now dying all away,

And prospect oft so dreary and forlorn, Now pealing loud again, and louder still Moved many a sigh at its disheartening length. Clear and sonorous, as the gale comes on! Yet feeling present evils, while the past With easy force it opens all the cells

Faintly impress the mind, or not at all, Where Memory slept. Wherever I have heard How readily we wish time spent revoked, A kindred melody, the scene recurs,

That we might try the ground again where once