...to secure them from that indifference with which things frequently contemplated are beheld. Impell'd with steps unceasing to pursue Some fleeting good...skies, Allures from far, yet, as I follow, flies. The Traveller sits him down (as he sometimes inelegantly expresses it) on an eminence of the Alps,...

...But me, not destin'd such delights to share, My prime of life in wand'ring spent and care: Impell'd with steps unceasing, to pursue Some fleeting good,...realms alone And find no spot of all the world my own.9 The alienation experienced in this exile is not merely a point of view from which Goldsmith's...

...Goldsmith's restless speaker has a similar experience in The Traveller (1764), confessing himself "Impell'd, with steps unceasing, to pursue / Some fleeting good, that mocks me with the view" (11.25-6).33 The poem, subtitled A Prospect of Society, places this figure on an Alpine ridge where...

...But me, not destin'd such delights to share, My prime of life in wand'ring spent and care: Impell'd, with steps unceasing, to pursue Some fleeting good,...skies, Allures from far, yet, as I follow, flies. (24-25) Besides antithesis, inversion, and the anastrophe of the first couplet, Goldsmith uses pleonasm...

...destined such delights to share, My prime of life in wandering spent and care, Impelled, with step unceasing, to pursue Some fleeting good that mocks...follow, flies: My fortune leads to traverse realms unknown, And find no spot of all the world my own." I spoke in a former lecture of that high courage...