My very dreams were rural, rural too The first-born efforts of my youthful muse, Sportive, and jingling her poetic bells Ere yet her ear was mistress of their powers.
No bard could please me but whose lyre was tuned To Nature's praises. Heroes and their feats Fatigued me, never weary of the pipe Of Tityrus, assembling as he sang The rustic throng beneath his favourite beech.
Then Milton had indeed a poet's charms:
New to my taste, his Paradise surpassed The struggling efforts of my boyish tongue To speak its excellence; I danced for joy.
I marvelled much that, at so ripe an age As twice seven years, his beauties had then first Engaged my wonder, and admiring still, And still admiring, with regret supposed The joy half lost because not sooner found.
Thee, too, enamoured of the life I loved, Pathetic in its praise, in its pursuit Determined, and possessing it at last With transports such as favoured lovers feel, I studied, prized, and wished that I had known, Ingenious Cowley: and though now, reclaimed By modern lights from an erroneous taste, I cannot but lament thy splendid wit Entangled in the cobwebs of the schools.
I still revere thee, courtly though retired, Though stretched at ease in Chertsey's silent bowers, Not unemployed, and finding rich amends For a lost world in solitude and verse.
'Tis born with all. The love of Nature's works Is an ingredient in the compound, man, Infused at the creation of the kind.
And though the Almighty Maker has throughout Discriminated each from each, by strokes And touches of His hand, with so much art Diversified, that two were never found Twins at all points--yet this obtains in all, That all discern a beauty in His works, And all can taste them: minds that have been formed And tutored, with a relish more exact, But none without some relish, none unmoved.
It is a flame that dies not even there, Where nothing feeds it. Neither business, crowds, Nor habits of luxurious city life, Whatever else they smother of true worth In human bosoms, quench it or abate.
The villas, with which London stands begirt Like a swarth Indian with his belt of beads, Prove it. A breath of unadulterate air, The glimpse of a green pasture, how they cheer The citizen, and brace his languid frame!
Even in the stifling bosom of the town, A garden in which nothing thrives, has charms That soothe the rich possessor; much consoled That here and there some sprigs of mournful mint, Of nightshade, or valerian, grace the well He cultivates. These serve him with a hint That Nature lives; that sight-refreshing green Is still the livery she delights to wear, Though sickly samples of the exuberant whole.
What are the casements lined with creeping herbs, The prouder sashes fronted with a range Of orange, myrtle, or the fragrant weed, The Frenchman's darling? are they not all proofs That man, immured in cities, still retains His inborn inextinguishable thirst Of rural scenes, compensating his loss By supplemental shifts, the best he may?
The most unfurnished with the means of life, And they that never pass their brick-wall bounds To range the fields, and treat their lungs with air, Yet feel the burning instinct: over-head Suspend their crazy boxes planted thick And watered duly. There the pitcher stands A fragment, and the spoutless tea-pot there;Sad witnesses how close-pent man regrets The country, with what ardour he contrives A peep at nature, when he can no more.
Hail, therefore, patroness of health and ease And contemplation, heart-consoling joys And harmless pleasures, in the thronged abode Of multitudes unknown, hail rural life!
Address himself who will to the pursuit Of honours, or emolument, or fame, I shall not add myself to such a chase, Thwart his attempts, or envy his success.
Some must be great. Great offices will have Great talents. And God gives to every man The virtue, temper, understanding, taste, That lifts him into life, and lets him fall Just in the niche he was ordained to fill.
To the deliverer of an injured land He gives a tongue to enlarge upon, a heart To feel, and courage to redress her wrongs;To monarchs dignity, to judges sense;To artists ingenuity and skill;To me an unambitious mind, content In the low vale of life, that early felt A wish for ease and leisure, and ere long Found here that leisure and that ease I wished.
BOOK V.
THE WINTER MORNING WALK.
'Tis morning; and the sun, with ruddy orb Ascending, fires the horizon; while the clouds, That crowd away before the driving wind, More ardent as the disk emerges more, Resemble most some city in a blaze, Seen through the leafless wood. His slanting ray Slides ineffectual down the snowy vale, And, tingeing all with his own rosy hue, From every herb and every spiry blade Stretches a length of shadow o'er the field, Mine, spindling into longitude immense, In spite of gravity, and sage remark That I myself am but a fleeting shade, Provokes me to a smile. With eye askance I view the muscular proportioned limb Transformed to a lean shank; the shapeless pair, As they designed to mock me, at my side Take step for step, and, as I near approach The cottage, walk along the plastered wall, Preposterous sight, the legs without the man.
The verdure of the plain lies buried deep Beneath the dazzling deluge, and the bents And coarser grass upspearing o'er the rest, Of late unsightly and unseen, now shine Conspicuous, and, in bright apparel clad, And fledged with icy feathers, nod superb.
The cattle mourn in corners, where the fence Screens them, and seem, half petrified, to sleep In unrecumbent sadness. There they wait Their wonted fodder, not, like hungering man, Fretful if unsupplied, but silent, meek, And patient of the slow-paced swain's delay.
He from the stack carves out the accustomed load, Deep-plunging, and again deep-plunging oft His broad keen knife into the solid mass:
