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<div style="background:#fff;border:#bbb dashed 1px;padding:5px"><a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=537914" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><div style="margin:10px 0"><strong>The Task: Book I. -- The Sofa</strong></div><div style="margin:10px 0">I sing the Sofa. I who lately sang<br>Truth, Hope, and Charity, and touched with awe<br>The solemn chords, and with a trembling hand,<br>Escaped with pain from that adventurous flight,<br>Now seek repose upon an humbler theme;<br>The theme though humble, yet august and proud<br>The occasion, - for the fair commands the song.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Time was when clothing, sumptuous or for use,<br>Save their own painted skins, our sires had none.<br>As yet black breeches were not, satin smooth,<br>Or velvet soft, or plush with shaggy pile.<br>The hardy chief upon the rugged rock<br>Washed by the sea, or on the gravelly bank<br>Thrown up by wintry torrents roaring loud,<br>Fearless of wrong, reposed his weary strength.<br>Those barbarous ages past, succeeded next<br>The birthday of invention, weak at first,<br>Dull in design, and clumsy to perform.<br>Joint-stools were then created; on three legs<br>Upborne they stood, - three legs upholding firm<br>A massy slab, in fashion square or round.<br>On such a stool immortal Alfred sat,<br>And swayed the sceptre of his infant realms; <br>And such in ancient halls and mansions drear<br>May still be seen, but perforated sore<br>And drilled in holes the solid oak is found,<br>By worms voracious eating through and through.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">At length a generation more refined<br>Improved the simple plan, made three legs four,<br>Gave them a twisted form vermicular,<br>And o'er the seat with plenteous wadding stuffed<br>Induced a splendid cover green and blue,<br>Yellow and red, of tapestry richly wrought<br>And woven close, or needle-work sublime.<br>There might ye see the peony spread wide,<br>The full-blown rose, the shepherd and his lass,<br>Lap-dog and lambkin with black staring eyes,<br>And parrots with twin cherries in their beak.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Now came the cane from India, smooth and bright<br>With Nature's varnish; severed into stripes<br>That interlaced each other, these supplied <br>Of texture firm a lattice-work, that braced<br>The new machine, and it became a chair.<br>But restless was the chair; the back erect <br>Distressed the weary loins that felt no ease;<br>The slippery seat betrayed the sliding part<br>That pressed it, and the feet hung dangling down,<br>Anxious in vain to find the distant floor.<br>These for the rich: the rest, whom fate had placed<br>In modest mediocrity, content<br>With base materials, sat on well-tanned hides<br>Obdurate and unyielding, glassy smooth,<br>With here and there a tuft of crimson yarn,<br>Or scarlet crewel in the cushion fixed:<br>If cushion might be called, what harder seemed<br>Than the firm oak of which the frame was formed.<br>No want of timber then was felt or feared<br>In Albion's happy isle. The lumber stood<br>Ponderous, and fixed by its own massy weight.<br>But elbows still were wanting; these, some say,<br>An Alderman of Cripplegate contrived,<br>And some ascribe the invention to a priest<br>Burly and big and studious of his ease.<br>But rude at first, and not with easy slope<br>Receding wide, they pressed against the ribs,<br>And bruised the side, and elevated high<br>Taught the raised shoulders to invade the ears.<br>Long time elapsed or ere our rugged sires<br>Complained, though incommodiously pent in,<br>And ill at ease behind. The ladies first<br>'Gan murmur, as became the softer sex.<br>Ingenious fancy, never better pleased<br>Than when employed to accommodate the fair, <br>Heard the sweet moan with pity, and devised <br>The soft settee; one elbow at each end,<br>And in the midst an elbow, it received<br>United yet divided, twain at once.<br>So sit two kings of Brentford on one throne;<br>And so two citizens who take the air<br>Close packed and smiling in a chaise and one.<br>But relaxation of the languid frame<br>By soft recumbency of outstretched limbs,<br>Was bliss reserved for happier days; - so slow<br>The growth of what is excellent, so hard<br>To attain perfection in this nether world.<br>Thus first necessity invented stools,<br>Convenience next suggested elbow chairs,<br>And luxury the accomplished sofa last.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">The nurse sleeps sweetly, hired to watch the sick<br>Whom snoring she disturbs. As sweetly he<br>Who quits the coach-box at the midnight hour<br>To sleep within the carriage more secure,<br>His legs depending at the open door.<br>Sweet sleep enjoys the curate in his desk,<br>The tedious rector drawling o'er his head,<br>And sweet the clerk below: but neither sleep<br>Of lazy nurse, who snores the sick man dead,<br>Nor his who quits the box at midnight hour<br>To slumber in the carriage more secure,<br>Nor sleep enjoyed by curate in his desk,<br>Nor yet the dozings of the clerk are sweet,<br>Compared with the repose the sofa yields.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Oh may I live exempted (while I live<br>Guiltless of pampered appetite obscene,)<br>From pangs arthritic that infest the toe<br>Of libertine excess. The sofa suits<br>The gouty limb, 'tis true; but gouty limb,<br>Though on a sofa, may I never feel:<br>For I have loved the rural walk through lanes<br>Of grassy swarth close cropt by nibbling sheep,<br>And skirted thick with intertexture firm<br>Of thorny boughs; have loved the rural walk<br>O'er hills, through valleys, and by river's brink<br>E'er since a truant boy I passed my bounds<br>To enjoy a ramble on the banks of Thames.<br>And still remember, nor without regret<br>Of hours that sorrow since has much endeared,<br>How oft, my slice of pocket store consumed,<br>Still hungering pennyless and far from home, <br>I fed on scarlet hips and stony haws,<br>Or blushing crabs, or berries that emboss<br>The bramble, black as jet, or sloes austere,<br>Hard fare! but such as boyish appetite<br>Disdains not, nor the palate undepraved<br>By culinary arts unsavoury deems.<br>No sofa then awaited my return,<br>Nor sofa then I needed. Youth repairs<br>His wasted spirits quickly, by long toil <br>Incurring short fatigue; and though our years,<br>As life declines, speed rapidly away,<br>And not a year but pilfers as he goes<br>Some youthful grace that age would gladly keep,<br>A tooth or auburn lock, and by degrees<br>Their length and colour from the locks they spare;<br>The elastic spring of an unwearied foot <br>That mounts the stile with ease, or leaps the fence,<br>That play of lungs inhaling and again<br>Respiring freely the fresh air, that makes<br>Swift pace or steep ascent no toil to me,<br>Mine have not pilfered yet; nor yet impaired<br>My relish of fair prospect: scenes that soothed<br>Or charmed me young, no longer young, I find<br>Still soothing and of power to charm me still.<br>And witness, dear companion of my walks,<br>Whose arm this twentieth winter I perceive<br>Fast locked in mine, with pleasure such as love<br>Confirmed by long experience of thy worth<br>And well-tried virtues could alone inspire, -<br>Witness a joy that thou hast doubled long.<br>Thou know'st my praise of nature most sincere, <br>And that my raptures are not conjur'd up<br>To serve occasions of poetic pomp,<br>But genuine, and art partner of them all.<br>How oft upon yon eminence our pace<br>Has slacken'd to a pause, and we have borne<br>The ruffling wind, scarce conscious that it blew,<br>While admiration, feeding at the eye,<br>And still unsated, dwelt upon the scene.<br>Thence with what pleasure have we just discern'd<br>The distant plough slow moving, and beside<br>His lab'ring team, that swerv'd not from the track,<br>The sturdy swain diminish'd to a boy!<br>Here Ouse, slow winding through a level <br>Of spacious meads with cattle sprinkled o'er,<br>Conducts the eye along its sinuous course<br>Delighted. There, fast rooted in his bank,<br>Stand, never overlook'd, our fav'rite elms,<br>That screen the herdsman's solitary hut;<br>While far beyond, and overthwart the stream<br>That, as with molten glass, inlays the vale,<br>The sloping land recedes into the clouds;<br>Displaying on its varied side the grace<br>Of hedge-row beauties numberless, square tow'r,<br>Tall spire, from which the sound of cheerful bells<br>Just undulates upon the list'ning ear,<br>Groves, heaths and smoking villages remote.<br>Scenes must be beautiful, which, daily view'd,<br>Please daily, and whose novelty survives<br>Long knowledge and the scrutiny of years.<br>Praise justly due to those that I describe.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Nor rural sights alone, but rural sounds<br>Exhilarate the spirit, and restore<br>The tone of languid nature. Mighty winds<br>That sweep the skirt of some far-spreading wood<br>Of ancient growth, make music not unlike<br>The dash of ocean on his winding shore,<br>And lull the spirit while they fill the mind,<br>Unnumbered branches waving in the blast,<br>And all their leaves fast fluttering, all at once<br>Nor less composure waits upon the roar<br>Of distant floods, or on the softer voice<br>Of neighbouring fountain, or of rills that slip<br>Through the cleft rock, and chiming as they fall<br>Upon loose pebbles, lose themselves at length<br>In matted grass, that with a livelier green<br>Betrays the secret of their silent course.<br>Nature inanimate employs sweet sounds,<br>But animated nature sweeter still<br>To soothe and satisfy the human ear.<br>Ten thousand warblers cheer the day, and one <br>The livelong night: nor these alone whose notes<br>Nice-fingered art must emulate in vain,<br>But cawing rooks, and kites that swim sublime<br>In still repeated circles, screaming loud, <br>The jay, the pie, and even the boding owl <br>That hails the rising moon, have charms for me. <br>Sounds inharmonious in themselves and harsh,<br>Yet heard in scenes where peace for ever reigns<br>And only there, please highly for their sake.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Peace to the artist, whose ingenious thought<br>Devised the weather-house, that useful toy!<br>Fearless of humid air and gathering rains<br>Forth steps the man, an emblem of myself;<br>More delicate his timorous mate retires.<br>When winter soaks the fields, and female feet<br>Too weak to struggle with tenacious clay,<br>Or ford the the rivulets, are best at home, <br>The task of new discoveries falls on me.<br>At such a season and with such a charge<br>Once went I forth, and found, till then unknown,<br>A cottage, whither oft we since repair:<br>'Tis perched upon the green hill-top, but close<br>Environed with a ring of branching elms<br>That overhang the thatch, itself unseen,<br>Peeps at the vale below; so thick beset<br>With foliage of such dark redundant growth,<br>I called the low-roofed lodge the <br>peasant's nest.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">And hidden as it is, and far remote<br>From such unpleasing sounds as haunt the ear<br>In village or in town, the bay of curs<br>Incessant, clinking hammers, grinding wheels,<br>And infants clamorous whether pleased or pained,<br>Oft have I wished the peaceful covert mine.<br>Here, I have said, at least I should possess<br>The poet's treasure, silence, and indulge<br>The dreams of fancy, tranquil and secure.<br>Vain thought! the dweller in that still retreat<br>Dearly obtains the refuge it affords.<br>Its elevated site forbids the wretch <br>To drink sweet waters of the crystal well;<br>He dips his bowl into the weedy ditch,<br>And heavy-laden brings his beverage home, <br>Far-fetched and little worth; nor seldom waits,<br>Dependent on the baker's punctual call,<br>To hear his creaking panniers at the door,<br>Angry and sad, and his last crust consumed.<br>So farewell envy of the <br>peasant's nest.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">If solitude make scant the means of life, <br>Society for me! Thou seeming sweet,<br>Be still a pleasing object in my view,<br>My visit still, but never mine abode.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Not distant far, a length of colonnade<br>Invites us: Monument of ancient taste,<br>Now scorned, but worthy of a better fate.<br>Our fathers knew the value of a screen<br>From sultry suns, and in their shaded walks <br>And long-protracted bowers, enjoyed at noon<br>The gloom and coolness of declining day.<br>We bear our shades about us; self-deprived <br>Of other screen, the thin umbrella spread,<br>And range an Indian waste without a tree.<br>Thanks to Benevolus; he spares me yet<br>These chestnuts ranged in corresponding lines,<br>And though himself so polished, still reprieves<br>The obsolete prolixity of shade.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Descending now (but cautious, lest too fast,)<br>A sudden steep, upon a rustic bridge<br>We pass a gulf in which the willows dip<br>Their pendent boughs, stooping as if to drink.<br>Hence ankle-deep in moss and flowery thyme<br>We mount again, and feel at every step<br>Our foot half sunk in hillocks green and soft,<br>Raised by the mole, the miner of the soil.<br>He not unlike the great ones of mankind,<br>Disfigures earth, and plotting in the dark<br>Toils much to earn a monumental pile,<br>That may record the mischiefs he has done.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">The summit gained, behold the proud alcove<br>That crowns it! yet not all its pride secures<br>The grant retreat from injuries impressed <br>By rural carvers, who with knives deface<br>The panels, leaving an obscure rude name <br>In characters uncouth, and spelt amiss.<br>So strong the zeal to immortalise himself <br>Beats in the breast of man, that even a few<br>Few transient years won from the abyss abhorred<br>Of blank oblivion, seem a glorious prize,<br>And even to a clown. Now roves the eye,<br>And posted on this speculative height <br>Exults in its command. The sheep-fold here<br>Pours out its fleecy tenants o'er the glebe,<br>At first progressive as a stream, they seek<br>The middle field; but scattered by degrees<br>Each to his choice, soon whiten all the land.<br>There, from the sun-burnt hay-field homeward creeps<br>The loaded wain, while lightened of its charge<br>The wain that meets it passes swiftly by,<br>The boorish driver leaning o'er his team<br>Vociferous, and impatient of delay.<br>Nor less attractive is the woodland scene,<br>Diversified with trees of every growth<br>Alike yet various. Here the gray smooth trunks<br>Of ash, or lime, or beech, distinctly shine,<br>Within the twilight of their distant shades;<br>There lost behind a rising ground, the wood<br>Seems sunk, and shortened to its topmost boughs.<br>No tree in all the grove but has its charms,<br>Though each its hue peculiar; paler some,<br>And of a wanish gray; the willow such<br>And poplar, that with silver lines his leaf,<br>And ash far-stretching his umbrageous arm; <br>Of deeper green the elm; and deeper still,<br>Lord of the woods, the long-surviving oak. <br>Some glossy-leaved and shining in the sun,<br>The maple, and the beech of oily nuts<br>Prolific, and the line at dewy eve<br>Diffusing odours: nor unnoted pass<br>The sycamore, capricious in attire,<br>Now green, now tawny, and ere autumn yet<br>Have changed the woods, in scarlet honours bright.<br>O'er these, but far beyond, (a spacious map<br>Of hill and valley interposed between,)<br>The Ouse, dividing the well-watered land,<br>Now glitters in the sun, and now retires,<br>As bashful, yet impatient to be seen.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Hence the declevity is sharp and short,<br>And such the re-ascent; between them weeps<br>A little naiad her impoverished urn<br>All summer long, which winter fills again.<br>The folded gates would bar my progress now,<br>But that the lord of this enclosed demesne,<br>Communicative of the good he owns,<br>Admits me to a share: the guiltless eye<br>Commits no wrong, nor wastes what it enjoys.<br>Refreshing change! where now the blazing sun?<br>By short transition we have lost his glare,<br>And stepped at once into a cooler clime. <br>Ye fallen avenues! once more I mourn<br>Your fate unmerited, once more rejoice<br>That yet a remnant of your race survives.<br>How airy and how light the graceful arch, <br>Yet awful as the consecrated roof<br>Re-echoing pious anthems! while beneath<br>The chequered earth seems restless as a flood<br>Brushed by the wind. So sportive is the light<br>Shot through the boughs, it dances as they dance,<br>Shadow and sunshine intermingling quick, <br>And darkening and enlightening, as the leaves<br>Play wanton, every moment, every spot.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">And now with nerves new-braced and spirits cheered<br>We tread the wilderness, whose well-rolled walks<br>With curvature of slow and easy sweep, -<br>Deception innocent, - give ample space<br>To narrow bounds. The grove receives us next;<br>Between the upright shafts of whose tall elms<br>We may discern the thresher at his task.<br>Thump after thump, resounds the constant flail,<br>That seems to swing uncertain, and yet falls<br>Full on the destined ear. Wide flies the chaff,<br>The rustling straw sends up a frequent mist<br>Of atoms sparkling in the noonday beam.<br>Come hither, ye that press your beds of down<br>And sleep not, - see him sweating o'er his bread<br>Before he eats it. - 'Tis the primal curse,<br>But softened into mercy; made the pledge<br>Of cheerful days, and nights without a groan.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">By ceaseless action, all that is subsists.<br>Constant rotation of the unwearied wheel<br>That nature rides upon, maintains her health,<br>Her beauty, her fertility. She dreads<br>An instant's pause, and lives but while she moves.<br>Its own resolvency upholds the world.<br>Winds from all quarters agitate the air,<br>And fit the limpid elements for use,<br>Else noxious: oceans, rivers, lakes, and streams<br>By restless undulation. Even the oak<br>Thrives by the rude concussion of the storm;<br>He seems indeed indignant, and to feel<br>The impression of the blast with proud disdain, <br>Frowning as if in his unconscious arm<br>He held the thunder. But the monarch owes<br>His firm stability to what he scorns,<br>More fixed below, the more disturbed above.<br>The law by which all creatures else are bound,<br>Binds man the lord of all. Himself derives<br>No mean advantage from a kindred cause,<br>From strenuous toil his hours of sweetest ease.<br>The sedentary stretch their lazy length <br>When custom bids, but no refreshment find, <br>For none they need: the languid eye, the cheek<br>Deserted of its bloom, the flaccid, shrunk,<br>And withered muscle, and the vapid soul,<br>Reproach their owner with that love of rest<br>To which he forfeits even the rest he loves.<br>Not such the alert and active. Measure life <br>By its true worth, the comforts it affords,<br>And theirs alone seems worthy of the name<br>Good health, and its associate in the most, <br>Good temper; spirits prompt to undertake, <br>And not soon spent, though in an arduous task;<br>The powers of fancy and strong thought are theirs;<br>Even age itself seems privileged in them<br>With clear exemption from its own defects.<br>A sparkling eye beneath a wrinkled front <br>The veteran shows, and gracing a gray beard<br>With youthful smiles, descends towards the grave<br>Sprightly, and old almost without decay.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Like a coy maiden, ease, when courted most,<br>Farthest retires, - an idol, at whose shrine <br>Who oftenest sacrifice are favoured least.<br>The love of nature, and the scenes she draws <br>Is nature's dictate. Strange! there should be found<br>Who self-imprisoned in their proud saloons,<br>Renounce the odours of the open field<br>For the unscented fictions of the loom;<br>Who satisfied with only pencilled scenes,<br>Prefer to the performance of a God <br>The inferior wonders of an artist's hand.<br>Lovely indeed the mimic works of art,<br>But nature's works far lovelier. I admire -<br>None more admires the painter's magic skill, <br>Who shows me that which I shall never see,<br>Conveys a distant country into mine, <br>And throws Italian light on English walls.<br>But imitative strokes can do no more<br>Than please the eye, sweet nature every sense.<br>The air salubrious of her lofty hills,<br>The cheering fragrance of her dewy vales<br>And music of her woods, - no works of man<br>May rival these; these all bespeak a power<br>Peculiar, and exclusively her own.<br>Beneath the open sky she spreads the feast;<br>'Tis free to all, - 'tis every day renewed,<br>Who scorns it, starves deservedly at home. <br>He does not scorn it, who imprisoned long<br>In some unwholesome dungeon, and a prey<br>To sallow sickness, which the vapours dank<br>And clammy of his dark abode have bred,<br>Escapes at last to liberty and light.<br>His cheek recovers soon its healthful hue, <br>His eye relumines its extinguished fires,<br>He walks, he leaps, he runs, - is winged with joy. <br>And riots in the sweets of every breeze.<br>He does not scorn it, who has long endured <br>A fever's agonies, and fed on drugs.<br>Nor yet the mariner, his blood inflamed <br>With acrid salts; his very heart athirst<br>To gaze at nature in her green array.<br>Upon the ship's tall side he stands, possessed<br>With visions prompted by intense desire;<br>Fair fields appear below, such as he left <br>Far distant, such as he would die to find, -<br>He seeks them headlong, and is seen no more.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">The spleen is seldom felt where Flora reigns; <br>The lowering eye, the petulance, the frown,<br>And sullen sadness that o'ershade, distort,<br>And mar the face of beauty, when no cause<br>For such immeasurable woe appears,<br>These Flora banishes, and gives the fair<br>Sweet smiles and bloom less transient than her own.<br>It is the constant revolution stale<br>And tasteless, of the same repeated joys,<br>That palls and satiates, and makes the languid life<br>A pedlar's pack, that bows the bearer down.<br>Health suffers, and the spirits ebb; the heart<br>Recoils from its own choice, - at the full feast<br>Is famished, - finds no music in the song,<br>No smartness in the jest, and wonders why.<br>Yet thousands still desire to journey on,<br>Though halt and weary on the path they tread.<br>The paralytic who can hold her cards<br>But cannot play them, borrows a friend's hand<br>To deal and shuffle, to divide and sort<br>Her mingled suits and sequences, and sits<br>Spectatress both and spectacle, a sad<br>And silent cypher, while her proxy plays,<br>Others are dragged into the crowded room<br>Between supporters; and once seated, sit <br>Through downright inability to rise,<br>Till the stout bearers lift the corpse again.<br>These speak a loud memento. Yet even these<br>Themselves love life, and cling to it, as he<br>That overhangs a torrent to a twig.<br>They love it, and yet loathe it; fear to die.<br>Yet scorn the purposes for which they live.<br>Then wherefore not renounce them? No - the dread,<br>The slavish dread of solitude that breeds<br>Reflection and remorse, the fear of shame,<br>And their inveterate habits, all forbid.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Whom call we gay? That honour has been long<br>The boast of mere pretenders to the name.<br>The innocent are gay; - the lark is gay<br>That dries his feathers saturate with dew<br>Beneath the rosy cloud, while yet the beams<br>Of day-spring overshoot his humble nest.<br>The peasant too, a witness of his song,<br>Himself a songster, is as gay as he.<br>But save me from the gaiety of those<br>Whose headaches nail them to a noon-day bed;<br>And save me too from theirs whose haggard eyes<br>Flash desperation, and betray their pangs<br>For property stripped off by cruel chance;<br>From gaiety that fills the bones with pain,<br>The mouth with blasphemy, the heart with woe.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">The earth was made so various, that the mind<br>Of desultory man, studious of change,<br>And pleased with novelty, might be indulged.<br>Prospects however lovely may be seen<br>Till half their beauties fade; the weary sight,<br>Too well acquainted with their smiles, slides off<br>Fastidious, seeking less familiar scenes.<br>Then snug enclosures in the sheltered vale,<br>Where frequent hedges intercept the eye,<br>Delight us, happy to renounce a while, <br>Not senseless of its charms, what still we love,<br>That such short absence may endear it more.<br>Then forests, or the savage rock may please,<br>That hides the sea-mew in his hollow clefts<br>Above the reach of man: his hoary head<br>Conspicuous many a league, the marmer<br>Bound homeward, and in hope already there,<br>Greets with three cheers exulting. At his waist<br>A girdle of half-withered shrubs he shows,<br>And at his feet the baffled billows die.<br>The common overgrown with fern, and rough<br>With prickly goss, that shapeless and deform<br>And dangerous to the touch, has yet its bloom<br>And decks itself with ornaments of gold,<br>Yields no unpleasing ramble; there the turf<br>Smells fresh, and rich in odoriferous herbs<br>And fungous fruits of earth, regales the sense<br>With luxury of unexpected sweets.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">There often wanders one, whom better days<br>Saw better clad, in cloak of satin trimmed<br>With lace, and hat with splendid riband bound.<br>A serving-maid was she, and fell in love<br>With one who left her, went to sea and died.<br>Her fancy followed him through foaming waves<br>To distant shores, and she would sit and weep<br>At what a sailor suffers; fancy too,<br>Delusive most where warmest wishes are,<br>Would oft anticipate his glad return,<br>And dream of transports she was not to know.<br>She heard the doleful tidings of his death,<br>And never smiled again. And now she roams <br>The dreary waste; there spends the livelong day.<br>And there, unless when charity forbids,<br>The livelong night. A tattered apron hides,<br>Worn as a cloak, and hardly hides a gown<br>More tattered still; and both but ill conceal<br>A bosom heaved with never-ceasing sighs.<br>She begs an idle pin of all she meets,<br>And hoards them in her sleeve; but needful food,<br>Though pressed with hunger oft, or comelier clothes,<br>Though pinched with cold, asks never. - Kate is crazed.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">I see a colemn of slow-rising smoke<br>O'ertop the lofty wood that skirts the wild. <br>A vagabond and useless tribe there eat<br>Their miserable meal. A kettle slung<br>Between two poles upon a stick transverse,<br>Receives the morsel; flesh obscene of dog,<br>Or vermin, or at best, of cock purloined<br>From his accustomed perch. Hard-faring race!<br>They pick their fuel out of every hedge,<br>Which kindled with dry leaves, just saves unquenched <br>The spark of life. The sportive wind blows wide<br>Their fluttering rags, and shows a tawny skin, <br>The vellum of pedigree they claim. <br>Great skill have they in palmistry, and more <br>To conjure clean away the gold they touch,<br>Conveying worthless dross into its place.<br>Loud when they beg, dumb only when they steal.<br>Strange! that a creature rational, and cast<br>In human mould, should brutalize by choice<br>His nature, and though capable of arts<br>By which the world might profit and himself,<br>Self-banished from society, prefer<br>Such squalid sloth to honourable toil.<br>Yet even these, though feigning sickness oft <br>They swathe the forehead, drag the limping limb<br>And vex their flesh with artificial sores,<br>Can change their whine into a mirthful note<br>When safe occasion offers, and with dance<br>And music of the bladder and the bag <br>Beguile their woes and make the woods resound.<br>Such health and gaiety of heart enjoy<br>The houseless rovers of the sylvan world;<br>And breathing wholesome air, and wandering much,<br>Need other physic none to heal the effects<br>Of loathsome diet, penury, and cold.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Blest he, though undistinguished from the crowd <br>By wealth or dignity, who dwells secure<br>Where man, by nature fierce, has laid aside<br>His fierceness, having learnt, though slow to learn,<br>The manners and the arts of civil life.<br>His wants, indeed, are many: but supply<br>Is obvious; placed within the easy reach<br>Of temperate wishes and industrious hands.<br>Here virtue thrives as in her proper soil;<br>Not rude and surly, and beset with thorns,<br>And terrible to sight, as when she springs,<br>(If e'er she springs spontaneous,) in remote<br>And barbarous climes, where violence prevails<br>And strength is lord of all; but gentle, kind. <br>By culture tamed, by liberty refreshed,<br>And all her fruits by radiant truth matured.<br>War and the chase engross the savage whole;<br>War followed for revenge, or to supplant <br>The envied tenants of some happier spot,<br>The chase for sustenance, precarious trust!<br>His hard condition with severe constraint<br>Binds all his faculties, forbids all growth<br>Of wisdom, proves a school in which he learns<br>Sly circumvention, unrelenting hate,<br>Mean self-attachment, and scarce aught beside.<br>Thus fare the shivering natives of the north,<br>And thus the rangers of the western world<br>Where it advances far into the deep,<br>Towards the Antarctic. Even the favoured isles<br>So lately found, although the constant sun<br>Cheer all their seasons with a grateful smile,<br>Can boast but little virtue; and inert<br>Through plenty, lose in morals what they gain<br>In manners, victims of luxurious ease.<br>These therefore I can pity, placed remote<br>From all that science traces, art invents,<br>Or inspiration teaches; and enclosed<br>In boundless oceans never to be passed <br>By navigators uninformed as they, <br>Or ploughed perhaps by British bark again<br>But far beyond the rest, and with most cause,<br>Thee, gentle savage! whom no love thee<br>Or thine, but curiosity perhaps,<br>Or else vain-glory, prompted us to draw<br>Forth from thy native bowers, to show thee here<br>With what superior skill we can abuse<br>The gifts of Providence, and squander life.<br>The dream is past. And thou hast found again<br>Thy cocoas and bananas, palms and yams,<br>And homestall thatched with leaves. But hast thou found<br>Their former charms? And having seen our state,<br>Our palaces, our ladies, and our pomp<br>Of equipage, our gardens, and our sports,<br>And heard our music; are thy simple friends,<br>Thy simple fair, and all thy plain delights<br>As dear to thee as once? And have thy joys<br>Lost nothing by comparison with ours?<br>Rude as thou art (for we returned thee rude <br>And ignorant except of outward show,)<br>I cannot think thee yet so dull of heart<br>And spiritless, as never to regret<br>Sweets tasted here, and left as soon as known.<br>Methinks I see thee straying on the beach,<br>And asking of the surge that bathes thy foot <br>If ever it has washed our distant shore.<br>I see thee weep, and thine are honest tears,<br>A patriot's for his country. Thou art sad<br>At though of her forlorn and abject state,<br>From which no power of thine can raise her up.<br>Thus fancy paints thee, and though apt to err,<br>Perhaps errs little, when she paints thee thus.<br>She tells me too, that duly every morn<br>Thou climbst the mountain top, with eager eye<br>Exploring far and wide the watery waste<br>For sight of ship from England. Every speck<br>Seen in the dim horizon, turns thee pale<br>With conflict of contending hopes and fears,<br>But comes at last the dull and dusky eve,<br>And sends thee to thy cabin well-prepared <br>To dream all night of what the day denied.<br>Alas! expect it not. We found no bait<br>To tempt us in thy country. Doing good,<br>Disinterested good, is not our trade.<br>We travel far, 'tis true, but not for nought; <br>And must be bribed to compass earth again<br>By other hopes and richer fruits than yours.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">But though true worth and virtue, in the mild<br>And genial soil of cultivated life,<br>Thrive most, and may perhaps thrive only there,<br>Yet not in cities oft, - in proud and gay<br>And gain-devoted cities. Thither flow,<br>As to a common and most noisome sewer,<br>The dregs and feculence of every land.<br>In cities foul example on most minds<br>Begets its likeness. Rank abundance breeds<br>In gross and pamper'd cities sloth and lust,<br>And wantonness and gluttonous excess.<br>In cities vice is hidden with most ease,<br>Or seen with least reproach; and virtue, taught<br>By frequent lapse, can hope no triumph there<br>Beyond th' achievement of successful flight.<br>I do confess them nurseries of the arts,<br>In which they flourish most; where, in the beams<br>Of warm encouragement, and in the eye<br>Of public note, they reach their perfect size.<br>Such London is, by taste and wealth proclaim'd<br>The fairest capital of all the world,<br>By riot and incontinence the worst.<br>There, touch'd by Reynolds, a dull blank becomes<br>A lucid mirror, in which Nature sees<br>All her reflected features. Bacon there<br>Gives more than female beauty to a stone,<br>And Chatham's eloquence to marble lips.<br>Nor does the chisel occupy alone <br>The powers of sculpture, but the style as much; <br>Each province of her heart her equal care.<br>With nice incision of her guided steel<br>She ploughs a brazen field, and clothes a soil<br>So sterile with what charms soe'er she will,<br>The richest scenery and the loveliest forms. <br>Where finds philosophy her eagle eye<br>With which she gazes at yon burning disk<br>Undazzled, and detects and counts his spots?<br>In London. Where her implements exact <br>With which she calculates, computes and scans <br>All distance, motion, magnitude, and now<br>Measures an atom, and now girds a world?<br>In London. Where has commerce such a mart,<br>So rich, so thronged, so drained, and so supplied<br>As London, opulent, enlarged and still<br>Increasing London? Babylon of old<br>Not more the glory of the earth, than she<br>A more accomplished world's chief glory now.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">She has her praise. Now mark a spot or two<br>That so much beauty would do well to purge;<br>And show this queen of cities, that so fair <br>May yet be foul, so witty, yet not wise.<br>It is not seemly nor of good report<br>That she is slack in discipline, - more prompt<br>To avenge than to prevent the breach of law.<br>That she is rigid in denouncing death<br>On petty robbers, and indulges life<br>And liberty, and oft-times honour too <br>To peculators of the public gold.<br>That thieves at home must hang; but he that puts<br>Into his overgorged and bloated purse<br>The wealth of Indian provinces, escapes,<br>Nor is it well, nor can it come to good,<br>That through profane and infidel contempt<br>Of holy writ, she has presumed to annul<br>And abrogate, as roundly as she may,<br>The total ordinance and will of God; <br>Advancing fashion to the post of truth,<br>And centring all authority in modes<br>And customs of her own, till Sabbath rites<br>Have dwindled into unrespected forms, <br>And knees and hassocks are well-nigh divorced.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">God made the country, and man made the town.<br>What wonder then that health and virtue, gifts<br>That can alone make sweet the bitter draught<br>That life holds out to all, should most abound<br>And least be threaten'd in the fields and groves?<br>Possess ye therefore, ye who, borne about<br>In chariots and sedans, know no fatigue<br>But that of idleness, and taste no scenes<br>But such as art contrives, - possess ye still<br>Your element; there only ye can shine,<br>There only minds like yours can do no harm.<br>Our groves were planted to console at noon<br>The pensive wand'rer in their shades. At eve<br>The moonbeam, sliding softly in between<br>The sleeping leaves, is all the light they wish,<br>Birds warbling all the music. We can spare<br>The splendour of your lamps, they but eclipse<br>Our softer satellite. Your songs confound<br>Our more harmonious notes: the thrush departs<br>Scared, and th' offended nightingale is mute.<br>There is a public mischief in your mirth;<br>It plagues your country. Folly such as yours,<br>Grac'd with a sword, and worthier of a fan,<br>Has made, which enemies could ne'er have done,<br>Our arch of empire, steadfast but for you,<br>A mutilated structure, soon to fall.</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br /></a><br />poem by <a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/by.php?a=William+Cowper">William Cowper</a><div class=q>
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<script type="text/javascript" src="//s7.addthis.com/js/300/addthis_widget.js#pubid=citatepedia" async="async"></script><div style="display:inline-block" class="addthis_sharing_toolbox" data-url="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=537914" data-title="The Task: Book I. -- The Sofa de William Cowper" data-description="I sing the Sofa. I who lately sang
Truth, Hope, and Charity, and touched with awe
The solemn chords, and with a trembling hand,
Escaped with pain from that adventurous flight,
Now seek repose upon an humbler theme;
The theme though humble, yet aug..."></div>
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