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Patient of labour, with a little pleas'd;
Health ever-blooming; unambitious toil;
Calm contemplation and poetic ease.

The fall of kings,

The rage of nations, and the crush of states,
Move not the man, who, from the world efcap'd,
In ftill retreats, and flowery folitudes,

To Nature's voice attends from month to month,
And day to day, thro' the revolving year ;
Admiring, fees her in her every fhape;
Feels all her fweet emotions at his heart;
Takes what she liberal gives, nor thinks of more.
-He, from all the ftormy paffions free
That restless men involve, hears, and but hears,
At distance fafe, the human tempeft roar,
Wrapt clofe in conscious peace.

THOMSON.

THE

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keener tempests rife, and all the fields

Put on their winter robes of pureft white.

'Tis brightness all; fave where the new snow melts
Along the mazy current. Low the woods

Bow their hoar head; and, ere the languid fun
Faint from the West emits his evening ray,
Earth's univerfal face, deep hid, and chill,
Is one wide dazzling waste, that buries wide
The works of man. Drooping, the labourer ox

H

Stands

Stands cover'd o'er with fnow, and then demands
The fruit of all his toil. The fowls of heaven,
Tam'd by the cruel season, crowd around
The winnowing store, and claim the little boon
Which PROVIDENCE affigns them. One alone,
The red-breaft, facred to the houfhold gods,
Wifely regardful of th' embroiling sky,
In joyless fields and thorny thickets, leaves
His shivering mates, and pays to trusted man
His annual vifit. Half-afraid, he first

Against the window beats; then, brisk, alights
On the warm hearth; then, hopping o'er the floor,
Eyes all the fmiling family askance,

And pecks, and ftarts, and wonders where he is:
Till more familiar grown, the table-crumbs

Attract his flender feet. The foodlefs wilds
Pour forth their brown inhabitants.

The hare,

Tho' timorous of heart, and hard befet
By death in various forms, dark fnares, and dogs,
And more unpitying men, the garden seeks,
Urg'd on by fearless want. The bleating kind
Eye the bleak heaven, and next the glistening earth,
With looks of dumb defpair: then, fad difpers'd,
Dig for the wither'd herb thro' heaps of fnow.

THOMSON.

SECT.

LXXXIII.

ON A MAN PERISHING IN THE SNOW.

As thus the fnows arife; and foul, and fierce

All winter drives along the darken'd air ;

In his own loofe revolving fields, the fwain Difafter'd ftands; fees other hills afcend, Of unknown joyless brow, and other scenes, Of horrid profpect, fhag the trackless plain; Nor finds the river, nor the forest, hid Beneath the farmlefs wild; but wanders on From hill to dale, ftill more and more astray, Impatient flouncing thro' the drifted heaps, Stung with the thoughts of home; the thoughts of home Rush on his nerves, and call their vigour forth In many a vain attempt. How finks his foul! What black despair, what horror fills his heart! When for the dufky fpot, which fancy feign'd His tufted cottage rifing thro' the fnow, He meets the roughness of the middle waste, Far from the track and bleft abode of man; Whilft round him night refiftlefs clofes faft, And every tempeft howling o'er his head, Renders the favage wilderness more wild. Then throng the bufy fhapes into his mind, Of cover'd pits, unfathomably deep, A dire defcent beyond the power of frost, Of faithlefs bogs; of precipices huge,

Smooth'd up with fnow; and, what is land, unknown What water, of the ftill unfrozen spring,

In the loose marfh, or folitary lake,

Where the fresh fountain from the bottom boils.
These check his fearful steps; and down he finks
Beneath the shelter of the shapeless drift,
Thinking o'er all the bitternefs of death,
Mixt with the tender anguish nature shoots

H 2

Thro' the wrung bofom of the dying man,
His wife, his children, and his friends unfeen.

In vain for him th' officious wife prepares
The fire fair blazing, and the vestment warm ;
In vain his little children, peeping out

Into the mingling storm, demand their fire,
With tears of artlefs innocence. Alas!
Nor wife, nor children more shall he behold,
Nor friends, nor facred home. On every nerve
The deadly winter feizes; fhuts up fense;
And, o'er his inmoft vitals creeping cold,
Lays him along the fnow, a ftiffen'd corfe,
Stretch'd out, and bleaching in the northern blast.

THOMSON.

SE C T. LXXXIV.

ON THE CRUELTY OF SUFFOCATING BEES WITH

SULPHUR.

H see where, robb'd and murder'd, in that pit

AH

Lies the still heaving hive! at evening snatch'd, Beneath the cloud of guilt-concealing night, And fix'd o'er fulphur: while, not dreaming ill, The happy people in their waxen cells Sat tending public cares, and planning schemes Of temperance, for winter poor; rejoic'd To mark, full flowing round, their copious ftores. Sudden the dark oppreffive fteam afcends; And us'd to milder fcents, the tender race, By thousands, tumble from their honey'd domes, Convolv'd, and agonizing in the dust.

And

And was it then for this you roam'd the Spring,
Intent from flower to flower? for this you toil'd,
Ceaseless, the burning Summer-heats away?
For this in Autumn fearch'd the blooming wafte,
Nor loft one funny gleam? for this sad fate ?

O man! tyrannic lord! how long, how long,
Shall proftrate Nature groan beneath your rage,
Awaiting renovation? When oblig'd

Muft you destroy? Of their ambrofial food
Can you not borrow; and, in just return,
Afford them fhelter from the wintry winds?
Or, as the sharp year pinches, with their own
Again regale them on fome fmiling day?
See where the ftony bottom of their town
Looks defolate, and wild; with here and there
A helpless number, who the ruin'd state
Survive, lamenting weak, caft out to death.
Thus a proud city, populous and rich,
Full of the works of peace, and high in joy,
At theatre or feaft, or funk in fleep,

(As late, Palermo, was thy fate) is feiz'd

By fome dread earthquake, and convulfive hurl'd
Sheer from the black foundation, ftench-involv'd,
Into a gulf of blue fulphureous flame.

THOMSON

SECT.

LXXXV.

ON THE SUDDEN DEATH OF A FRIEND.

"APPEAR thou fightless minifter of death, "Go feek the fpot where guiltlefs joys refide:

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