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THE TRAVELLER

DEDICATION

TO THE REV. HENRY GOLDSMITH

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DEAR SIR, — I am sensible that the friendship between us can acquire no new force from the ceremonies of a Dedication; and perhaps it demands an excuse thus to prefix your name to my attempts, which you decline giving with your own. But as a part of this poem was formerly written to you from Switzerland, the whole can now with propriety be inscribed only to you. It will also throw a light upon many parts of it, when the reader understands that it is addressed to a man who, despising fame and fortune, has retired early to happiness and obscurity, with an income of forty pounds a year.

I now perceive, my dear brother, the wisdom of your humble choice. You have entered upon a sacred office, where the harvest is great, and the labourers are but few; while you have left the field of ambition, where the labourers are many and the harvests not worth carrying away. But of all kinds of ambition, what from the refinement of the times, from differing systems of criticism, and from the divisions of poetry, that which pursues poetical fame is the wildest.

Poetry makes a principal amusement among unpolished nations; but in a country verging to the extremes of refinement, painting and music come in for a share. As these offer the feeble mind less laborious entertainment, they at first rival poetry, and at length supplant her; they engross all that favour

once shown to her; and though but younger sisters, seize upon the elder's birthright.

Yet, however this art may be neglected by the powerful, it is still in greater danger from the mistaken efforts of the learned to improve it. What criticism have we not heard of late in favour of blank verse and Pindaric odes, choruses, anapests, and iambics, alliterative care and happy negligence! Every absurdity has now a champion to defend it, and as he is generally much in the wrong, so he has always much to say, for error was ever talkative.

But there is an enemy to this art still more dangerous; I mean party. Party entirely distorts the judgment, and destroys the taste. When the mind is once infected with the disease, it can only find pleasure in what contributes to increase the distemper. Like the tiger, that seldom desists from pursuing man after having once preyed upon human flesh, the reader who has once gratified his appetite with calumny makes ever after the most agreeable feast upon murdered reputation. Such readers generally admire some half-witted thing who wants to be thought a bold man, having lost the character of a wise one. Him they dignify with the name of poet: his tawdry lampoons are called satires; his turbulence is said to be his force, and his frenzy, fire.

What reception a poem may find, which has neither abuse, party, nor blank verse to support it, I cannot tell, nor am I solicitous to know. My aims are right. Without espousing the cause of any party, I have attempted to moderate the rage of all. I have endeavoured to show, that there may be equal happiness in states that are differently governed from our own; that every state has a particular principle of happiness, and that this principle in each may be carried to a mischievous excess. There are few can judge, better than yourself, how far these positions are illustrated in this poem.

I am, dear Sir, your most affectionate Brother,

OLIVER GOLDSMITH

THE TRAVELLER

OR, A PROSPECT OF SOCIETY

Remote, unfriended, melancholy, slow,
Or by the lazy Scheldt or wandering Po;
Or onward, where the rude Carinthian boor
Against the houseless stranger shuts the door;
Or where Campania's plain forsaken lies,
A weary waste expanding to the skies:
Where'er I roam, whatever realms to see,
My heart untravelled fondly turns to thee;
Still to my brother turns, with ceaseless pain,
And drags at each remove a lengthening chain.

Eternal blessings crown my earliest friend, And round his dwelling guardian saints attend! Blest be that spot where cheerful guests retire To pause from toil, and trim their evening fire:

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Blest that abode where want and pain repair,

And every stranger finds a ready chair:

Blest be those feasts with simple plenty crowned,
Where all the ruddy family around

Laugh at the jests or pranks that never fail,

Or sigh with pity at some mournful tale;
Or press the bashful stranger to his food,
And learn the luxury of doing good.

But me, not destined such delights to share, My prime of life in wandering spent and care,—

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Impelled, with steps unceasing, to pursue

Some fleeting good that mocks me with the view,—
That, like the circle bounding earth and skies,
Allures from far, yet, as I follow, flies;
My fortune leads to traverse realms alone,

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And find no spot of all the world my own.

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Even now, where Alpine solitudes ascend,

I sit me down a pensive hour to spend ;
And placed on high above the storm's career,
Look downward where an hundred realms appear
Lakes, forests, cities, plains extending wide,
The pomp of kings, the shepherd's humbler pride.

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When thus Creation's charms around combine,
Amidst the store, should thankless pride repine?
Say, should the philosophic mind disdain.

That good which makes each humbler bosom vain?
Let school-taught pride dissemble all it can,
These little things are great to little man;

And wiser he, whose sympathetic mind

Exults in all the good of all mankind.

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Ye glittering towns, with wealth and splendour crowned, 45 Ye fields, where summer spreads profusion round,

Ye lakes, whose vessels catch the busy gale,

Ye bending swains, that dress the flowery vale;
For me your tributary stores combine:
Creation's heir, the world, the world is mine!

As some lone miser, visiting his store, Bends at his treasure, counts, recounts it o'er; Hoards after hoards his rising raptures fill, Yet still he sighs, for hoards are wanting still:

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Thus to my breast alternate passions rise,

Pleased with each good that Heaven to man supplies:

Yet oft a sigh prevails, and sorrows fall,

To see the hoard of human bliss so small;

And oft I wish amidst the scene to find
Some spot to real happiness consigned,

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Where my worn soul, each wandering hope at rest,
May gather bliss to see my fellows blest.

But where to find that happiest spot below
Who can direct, when all pretend to know?
The shuddering tenant of the frigid zone
Boldly proclaims that happiest spot his own;
Extols the treasures of his stormy seas,

And his long nights of revelry and ease:
The naked negro, panting at the line,
Boasts of his golden sands and palmy wine,

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Basks in the glare, or stems the tepid wave,

And thanks his gods for all the good they gave.

Such is the patriot's boast where'er we roam;
His first, best country ever is at home.
And yet, perhaps, if countries we compare,
And estimate the blessings which they share,
Though patriots flatter, still shall wisdom find
An equal portion dealt to all mankind;
As different good, by Art or Nature given,
To different nations makes their blessings even.

Nature, a mother kind alike to all,
Still grants her bliss at Labour's earnest call;
With food as well the peasant is supplied
On Idra's cliff as Arno's shelvy side;
And though the rocky-crested summits frown,
These rocks by custom turn to beds of down.

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