Ambition, av'rice, penury incurr'd

By endless riot, vanity, the luft
Of pleasure and variety, dispatch,

As duly as the swallows difappear,

The world of wand'ring knights and fquires to town.
London ingulphs them all! The fhark is there,
And the fhark's prey; the fpendthrift, and the leech
That fucks him. There the fycophant, and he
Who, with bare-headed and obfequious bows,
Begs a warm office, doom'd to a cold jail
And groat per diem, if his patron frown.

The levee fwarms, as if, in golden pomp,

Were character'd on ev'ry ftateman's door,
"BATTER'D AND BANKRUPT FORTUNES MENDED
"HERE."

These are the charms that fully and eclipfe
The charms of nature. 'Tis the cruel gripe
That lean hard-handed poverty inflicts,

The hope of better things, the chance to win,
The with to fhine, the thirft to be amus'd,
That at the found of winter's hoary wing
Unpeople all our countries of fuch herds
Of flutt'ring, loit'ring, cringing, begging, loose
And wanton vagrants, as make London, vaft
And boundless as it is, a crowded coop..

Oh thou, refort and mart of all the earth, Chequer'd with all complexions of mankind, And spotted with all crimes; in whom I fee Much that I love, and more that I admire, And all that I abhor; thou freckled fair, That pleaseft and yet fhock'ft 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 fav'd a city once, And thou haft many righteous.-Well for thee— That falt preferves thee; more corrupted else, And therefore more obnoxious, at this hour Than Sodom in her day had pow'r to be,

For whom God heard his Abr'am plead in vain.

THE TASK.

BOOK IV.

ARGUMENT OF THE FOURTH BOOK.

The poft comes in.-The news-paper is read.—The world contemplated at a distance.—Address to Winter. The rural amusements of a winter evening compared with the fashionable ones.- Addrefs to evening.-A brown ftudy.-Fall of fnow in the evening.-The waggoner.-A poor family-piece.The rural thief-Public houfes-The multitude of them cenfured.—The farmer's daughter: what She was what he is.-The fimplicity of country manners almost loft.—Caufes of the change.—Defertion of the country by the rich.-Neglect of magiftrates. 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.