Still wants a grace, the loveliest it could show, A mine to satisfy the enormous cost. Drained to the last poor item of his wealth,
He sighs, departs, and leaves the accomplished plan, That he has touched, retouched, many a long day Laboured, and many a night pursued in dreams, Just when it meets his hopes, and proves the heaven He wanted, for a wealthier to enjoy!
And now perhaps the glorious hour is come, When, having no stake left, no pledge to endear Her interest, or that gives her sacred cause A moment's operation on his love,
He burns with most intense and flagrant zeal To serve his country. Ministerial grace Deals him out money from the public chest ; Or, if that mine be shut, some private purse Supplies his need with an usurious loan, To be refunded duly, when his vote
Well-managed shall have earned its worthy price. Oh innocent, compared with arts like these, Crape, and cocked pistol, and the whistling ball Sent through the traveller's temples! He, that finds One drop of heaven's sweet mercy in his cup, Can dig, beg, rot, and perish, well content, So he may wrap himself in honest rags At his last gasp; but could not for a world Fish up his dirty and dependent bread
From pools and ditches of the commonwealth, Sordid and sickening at his own success.
Ambition, avarice, penury incurred By endless riot, vanity, the lust
Of pleasure and variety, dispatch,
As duly as the swallows disappear,
The world of wandering knights and squires to town. London ingulphs them all! The shark is there, And the shark's prey; the spendthrift and the leech, That sucks him. There the sycophant, and he Who, with bare-headed and obsequious bows, Begs a warm office, doomed to a cold jail And groat per diem, if his patron frown.
The levee swarms, as if in golden pomp Were charactered on every statesman's door, "BATTERED AND BANKRUPT FORTUNES MEND ED HERE."
These are the charms, that sully and eclipse The charms of nature. 'Tis the cruel gripe, That lean hard-handed poverty inflicts, The hope of better things, the chance to win, The wish to shine, the thirst to be amused, That at the sound of winter's hoary wing Unpeople all our counties of such herds
Of fluttering, loitering, cringing, begging, loose And wanton vagrants, as make London, vast And boundless as it is, a crowded coop.
Oh thou, resort and mart of all the earth, Chequered with all complexions of mankind, And spotted with all crimes; in whom I see Much that I love, and more that I admire, And all that I abhor; thou freckled fair, That pleasest and yet shockest 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 saved a city once, And thou hast many righteous-Well for theeThat salt preserves thee; more corrupted else, And therefore more obnoxious, at this hour Than Sodom in her day had power to be,
For whom God heard his Abraham plead in vain,
The post comes in.-The newspaper is read.-The world contemplated at a distance.-Address to Winter.-The rural amusements of a Winter evening compared with the fashionable ones.-Address to evening-A brown study.-Fall of snow in the evening.-The waggoner.-A poor family piece. The rural thief.-Public houses.-The multitude of them censured.-The farmer's daughter: what she was what she is.-The simplicity of country manners almost lost.-Causes of the change. -Desertion of the country by the rich.-Neglect of magistrates.-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.
HARK! 'tis the twanging horn o'er yonder bridge, That with its wearisome but needful length Bestrides the wintry flood, in which the moon Sees her unwrinkled face reflected bright ;- He comes, the herald of a noisy world,
With spattered boots, strapped waist, and frozen
News from all nations lumbering at his back. True to his charge, the close-packed load behind, Yet careless what he brings, his one concern Is to conduct it to the destined inn ;
And having dropped the expected bag, pass on. He whistles as he goes, light-hearted wretch, Cold and yet cheerful; messenger of grief Perhaps to thousands, and of joy to some; To him indifferent whether grief or joy. Houses in ashes, and the fall of stocks, Births, deaths, and marriages, epistles wet With tears, that trickled down the writer's cheeks Fast as the periods from his fluent quill,
Or charged with amorous sighs of absent swains, Or nymphs responsive, equally affect
His horse and him, unconscious of them all. But oh the important budget! ushered in With such heart-shaking music, who can say What are its tidings? have our troops awaked? Or do they still, as if with opium drugged, Snore to the murmurs of the Atlantic wave? Is India free? and does she wear her plumed And jewelled turban with a smile of peace, Or do we grind her still? The grand debate, The popular harangue, the tart reply, The logic and the wisdom, and the wit,
And the loud laugh-I long to know them all;
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