<div style="background:#fff;border:#bbb dashed 1px;padding:5px"><a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=537919" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><div style="margin:10px 0"><strong>The Task: Book IV. -- The Winter Evening</strong></div><div style="margin:10px 0">Hark! ‘tis the twanging horn o’er yonder bridge,<br>That with its wearisome but needful length<br>Bestrides the wintry flood, in which the moon<br>Sees her unwrinkled face reflected bright;—<br>He comes, the herald of a noisy world,<br>With spatter’d boots, strapp’d waist, and frozen locks;<br>News from all nations lumbering at his back.<br>True to his charge, the close-pack’d load behind,<br>Yet, careless what he brings, his one concern<br>Is to conduct it to the destined inn,<br>And, having dropp’d the expected bag, pass on.<br>He whistles as he goes, light-hearted wretch,<br>Cold and yet cheerful: messenger of grief<br>Perhaps to thousands, and of joy to some;<br>To him indifferent whether grief or joy.<br>Houses in ashes, and the fall of stocks,<br>Births, deaths, and marriages, epistles wet<br>With tears, that trickled down the writer’s cheeks<br>Fast as the periods from his fluent quill,<br>Or charged with amorous sighs of absent swains,<br>Or nymphs responsive, equally affect<br>His horse and him, unconscious of them all.<br>But O the important budget! usher’d in<br>With such heart-shaking music, who can say<br>What are its tidings? have our troops awaked?<br>Or do they still, as if with opium drugg’d,<br>Snore to the murmurs of the Atlantic wave?<br>Is India free? and does she wear her plumed<br>And jewell’d turban with a smile of peace,<br>Or do we grind her still? The grand debate,<br>The popular harangue, the tart reply,<br>The logic, and the wisdom, and the wit,<br>And the loud laugh—I long to know them all;<br>I burn to set the imprison’d wranglers free,<br>And give them voice and utterance once again.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Now stir the fire, and close the shutters fast,<br>Let fall the curtains, wheel the sofa round,<br>And, while the bubbling and loud hissing urn<br>Throws up a steamy column, and the cups,<br>That cheer but not inebriate, wait on each,<br>So let us welcome peaceful evening in.<br>Not such his evening, who with shining face<br>Sweats in the crowded theatre, and, squeezed<br>And bored with elbow points through both his sides,<br>Outscolds the ranting actor on the stage:<br>Nor his, who patient stands till his feet throb,<br>And his head thumps, to feed upon the breath<br>Of patriots, bursting with heroic rage,<br>Or placemen, all tranquillity and smiles.<br>This folio of four pages, happy work!<br>Which not e’en critics criticise; that holds<br>Inquisitive attention, while I read,<br>Fast bound in chains of silence, which the fair,<br>Though eloquent themselves, yet fear to break;<br>What is it but a map of busy life,<br>Its fluctuations, and its vast concerns?<br>Here runs the mountainous and craggy ridge<br>That tempts Ambition. On the summit see<br>The seals of office glitter in his eyes;<br>He climbs, he pants, he grasps them! At his heels,<br>Close at his heels, a demagogue ascends,<br>And with a dexterous jerk soon twists him down,<br>And wins them, but to lose them in his turn.<br>Here rills of oily eloquence, in soft<br>Meanders, lubricate the course they take;<br>The modest speaker is ashamed and grieved<br>To engross a moment’s notice; and yet begs,<br>Begs a propitious ear for his poor thoughts,<br>However trivial all that he conceives.<br>Sweet bashfulness! it claims at least this praise;<br>The dearth of information and good sense,<br>That it foretells us, always comes to pass.<br>Cataracts of declamation thunder here;<br>There forests of no meaning spread the page,<br>In which all comprehension wanders lost;<br>While fields of pleasantry amuse us there<br>With merry descants on a nation’s woes.<br>The rest appears a wilderness of strange<br>But gay confusion; roses for the cheeks<br>And lilies for the brows of faded age,<br>Teeth for the toothless, ringlets for the bald,<br>Heaven, earth, and ocean, plunder’d of their sweets,<br>Nectareous essences, Olympian dews,<br>Sermons, and city feasts, and favourite airs,<br>Æthereal journeys, submarine exploits,<br>And Katerfelto, with his hair on end<br>At his own wonders, wondering for his bread.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">‘Tis pleasant, through the loopholes of retreat,<br>To peep at such a world; to see the stir<br>Of the great Babel, and not feel the crowd;<br>To hear the roar she sends through all her gates<br>At a safe distance, where the dying sound<br>Falls a soft murmur on the uninjured ear.<br>Thus sitting, and surveying thus at ease<br>The globe and its concerns, I seem advanced<br>To some secure and more than mortal height<br>That liberates and exempts me from them all.<br>It turns submitted to my view, turns round<br>With all its generations; I behold<br>The tumult and am still. The sound of war<br>Has lost its terrors ere it reaches me;<br>Grieves, but alarms me not. I mourn the pride<br>And avarice that make man a wolf to man;<br>Hear the faint echo of those brazen throats,<br>By which he speaks the language of his heart,<br>And sigh, but never tremble at the sound.<br>He travels and expatiates, as the bee<br>From flower to flower, so he from land to land;<br>The manners, customs, policy of all <br>Pay contribution to the store he gleans;<br>He sucks intelligence in every clime,<br>And spreads the honey of his deep research <br>At his return—a rich repast for me.<br>He travels, and I too. I tread his deck,<br>Ascend his topmast, through his peering eyes<br>Discover countries, with a kindred heart<br>Suffer his woes, and share in his escapes;<br>While fancy, like the finger of a clock,<br>Runs the great circuit, and is still at home.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">O Winter, ruler of the inverted year,<br>Thy scatter’d hair with sleet like ashes fill’d,<br>Thy breath congeal’d upon thy lips, thy cheeks<br>Fringed with a beard made white with other snows<br>Than those of age, thy forehead wrapp’d in clouds,<br>A leafless branch thy sceptre, and thy throne<br>A sliding car, indebted to no wheels,<br>But urged by storms along its slippery way,<br>I love thee, all unlovely as thou seem’st,<br>And dreaded as thou art! Thou hold’st the sun<br>A prisoner in the yet undawning east,<br>Shortening his journey between morn and noon,<br>And hurrying him, impatient of his stay,<br>Down to the rosy west; but kindly still<br>Compensating his loss with added hours<br>Of social converse and instructive ease,<br>And gathering, at short notice, in one group<br>The family dispersed, and fixing thought,<br>Not less dispersed by daylight and its cares.<br>I crown thee king of intimate delights,<br>Fireside enjoyments, homeborn happiness,<br>And all the comforts that the lowly roof<br>Of undisturb’d Retirement, and the hours<br>Of long uninterrupted evening know.<br>No rattling wheels stop short before these gates;<br>No powder’d pert proficient in the art<br>Of sounding an alarm assaults these doors<br>Till the street rings; no stationary steeds<br>Cough their own knell, while, heedless of the sound,<br>The silent circle fan themselves, and quake:<br>But here the needle plies its busy task,<br>The pattern grows, the well-depicted flower,<br>Wrought patiently into the snowy lawn,<br>Unfolds its bosom; buds, and leaves, and sprigs,<br>And curling tendrils, gracefully disposed,<br>Follow the nimble finger of the fair;<br>A wreath, that cannot fade, of flowers that blow<br>With most success when all besides decay.<br>The poet’s or historian’s page by one<br>Made vocal for the amusement of the rest;<br>The sprightly lyre, whose treasure of sweet sounds<br>The touch from many a trembling chord shakes out;<br>And the clear voice, symphonious, yet distinct,<br>And in the charming strife triumphant still,<br>Beguile the night, and set a keener edge<br>On female industry: the threaded steel<br>Flies swiftly, and unfelt the task proceeds.<br>The volume closed, the customary rites<br>Of the last meal commence. A Roman meal,<br>Such as the mistress of the world once found<br>Delicious, when her patriots of high note,<br>Perhaps by moonlight, at their humble doors,<br>And under an old oak’s domestic shade,<br>Enjoy’d, spare feast! a radish and an egg!<br>Discourse ensues, not trivial, yet not dull,<br>Nor such as with a frown forbids the play<br>Of fancy, or proscribes the sound of mirth:<br>Nor do we madly, like an impious world,<br>Who deem religion frenzy, and the God<br>That made them an intruder on their joys,<br>Start at his awful name, or deem his praise<br>A jarring note. Themes of a graver tone,<br>Exciting oft our gratitude and love,<br>While we retrace with Memory’s pointing wand,<br>That calls the past to our exact review,<br>The dangers we have ‘scaped, the broken snare,<br>The disappointed foe, deliverance found<br>Unlook’d for, life preserved, and peace restored,<br>Fruits of omnipotent eternal love.<br>O evenings worthy of the gods! exclaim’d<br>The Sabine bard. O evenings, I reply,<br>More to be prized and coveted than yours,<br>As more illumined, and with nobler truths,<br>That I, and mine, and those we love, enjoy.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Is Winter hideous in a garb like this?<br>Needs he the tragic fur, the smoke of lamps,<br>The pent-up breath of an unsavoury throng,<br>To thaw him into feeling; or the smart<br>And snappish dialogue, that flippant wits<br>Call comedy, to prompt him with a smile?<br>The self-complacent actor, when he views<br>(Stealing a sidelong glance at a full house)<br>The slope of faces from the floor to the roof<br>(As if one master spring controll’d them all),<br>Relax’d into a universal grin,<br>Sees not a countenance there that speaks of joy<br>Half so refined or so sincere as ours.<br>Cards were superfluous here, with all the tricks<br>That idleness has ever yet contrived<br>To fill the void of an unfurnish’d brain,<br>To palliate dulness, and give time a shove.<br>Time, as he passes us, has a dove’s wing.<br>Unsoil’d, and swift, and of a silken sound;<br>But the World’s Time is Time in masquerade!<br>Theirs, should I paint him, has his pinions fledged<br>With motley plumes; and, where the peacock shows<br>His azure eyes, is tinctured black and red<br>With spots quadrangular of diamond form,<br>Ensanguined hearts, clubs typical of strife,<br>And spades, the emblem of untimely graves.<br>What should be, and what was an hour-glass once,<br>Becomes a dice-box, and a billiard mace<br>Well does the work of his destructive scythe.<br>Thus deck’d, he charms a world whom Fashion blinds<br>To his true worth, most pleased when idle most;<br>Whose only happy are their wasted hours.<br>E’en misses, at whose age their mothers wore<br>The backstring and the bib, assume the dress<br>Of womanhood, fit pupils in the school<br>Of card-devoted Time, and, night by night<br>Placed at some vacant corner of the board,<br>Learn every trick, and soon play all the game.<br>But truce with censure. Roving as I rove, <br>Where shall I find an end, or how proceed?<br>As he that travels far oft turns aside,<br>To view some rugged rock or mouldering tower,<br>Which seen delights him not; then, coming home,<br>Describes and prints it, that the world may know<br>How far he went for what was nothing worth;<br>So I, with brush in hand and pallet spread,<br>With colours mix’d for a far different use,<br>Paint cards, and dolls, and every idle thing<br>That Fancy finds in her excursive flights.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Come, Evening, once again, season of peace;<br>Return, sweet Evening, and continue long!<br>Methinks I see thee in the streaky west,<br>With matron step slow moving, while the Night<br>Treads on thy sweeping train; one hand employ’d<br>In letting fall the curtain of repose<br>On bird and beast, the other charged for man<br>With sweet oblivion of the cares of day:<br>Not sumptuously adorn’d, not needing aid,<br>Like homely featured Night, of clustering gems;<br>A star or two, just twinkling on thy brow<br>Suffices thee; save that the moon is thine<br>No less than hers, not worn indeed on high<br>With ostentatious pageantry, but set<br>With modest grandeur in thy purple zone,<br>Resplendent less, but of an ampler round.<br>Come then, and thou shalt find thy votary calm,<br>Or make me so. Composure is thy gift:<br>And, whether I devote thy gentle hours<br>To books, to music, or the poet’s toil;<br>To weaving nets for bird-alluring fruit;<br>Or twining silken threads round ivory reels,<br>When they command whom man was born to please;<br>I slight thee not, but make thee welcome still.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Just when our drawing-rooms begin to blaze<br>With lights, by clear reflection multiplied<br>From many a mirror, in which he of Gath,<br>Goliath, might have seen his giant bulk<br>Whole without stooping, towering crest and all,<br>My pleasures too begin. But me perhaps<br>The glowing hearth may satisfy awhile<br>With faint illumination, that uplifts<br>The shadows to the ceiling, there by fits<br>Dancing uncouthly to the quivering flame.<br>Not undelightful is an hour to me<br>So spent in parlour twilight: such a gloom<br>Suits well the thoughtful or unthinking mind,<br>The mind contemplative, with some new theme<br>Pregnant, or indisposed alike to all.<br>Laugh ye, who boast your more mercurial powers,<br>That never felt a stupor, know no pause,<br>Nor need one; I am conscious, and confess,<br>Fearless, a soul that does not always think.<br>Me oft has Fancy ludicrous and wild<br>Soothed with a waking dream of houses, towers,<br>Trees, churches, and strange visages, express’d<br>In the red cinders, while with poring eye<br>I gazed, myself creating what I saw.<br>Nor less amused, have I quiescent watch’d<br>The sooty films that play upon the bars,<br>Pendulous and foreboding, in the view<br>Of superstition, prophesying still,<br>Though still deceived, some stranger’s near approach.<br>‘Tis thus the understanding takes repose<br>In indolent vacuity of thought,<br>And sleeps and is refresh’d. Meanwhile the face<br>Conceals the mood lethargic with a mask<br>Of deep deliberation, as the man<br>Were task’d to his full strength, absorb’d and lost.<br>Thus oft, reclined at ease, I lose an hour<br>At evening, till at length the freezing blast, <br>That sweeps the bolted shutter, summons home<br>The recollected powers; and, snapping short<br>The glassy threads with which the fancy weaves<br>Her brittle toils, restores me to myself.<br>How calm is my recess; and how the frost,<br>Raging abroad, and the rough wind, endear<br>The silence and the warmth enjoy’d within!<br>I saw the woods and fields at close of day<br>A variegated show; the meadows green,<br>Though faded; and the lands, where lately waved<br>The golden harvest, of a mellow brown,<br>Upturn’d so lately by the forceful share.<br>I saw far off the weedy fallows smile<br>With verdure not unprofitable, grazed<br>By flocks, fast feeding, and selecting each<br>His favourite herb; while all the leafless groves<br>That skirt the horizon, wore a sable hue<br>Scarce noticed in the kindred dusk of eve.<br>To-morrow brings a change, a total change!<br>Which even now, though silently perform’d, <br>And slowly, and by most unfelt, the face<br>Of universal nature undergoes.<br>Fast falls a fleecy shower: the downy flakes<br>Descending, and with never-ceasing lapse,<br>Softly alighting upon all below,<br>Assimilate all objects. Earth receives<br>Gladly the thickening mantle; and the green<br>And tender blade, that fear’d the chilling blast,<br>Escapes unhurt beneath so warm a veil.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">In such a world so thorny, and where none<br>Finds happiness unblighted; or, if found,<br>Without some thistly sorrow at its side;<br>It seems the part of wisdom, and no sin<br>Against the law of love, to measure lots<br>With less distinguish’d than ourselves; that thus<br>We may with patience bear our moderate ills,<br>And sympathise with others suffering more.<br>Ill fares the traveller now, and he that stalks<br>In ponderous boots beside his reeking team.<br>The wain goes heavily, impeded sore<br>By congregated loads, adhering close<br>To the clogg’d wheels; and in its sluggish pace<br>Noiseless appears a moving hill of snow.<br>The toiling steeds expand the nostril wide,<br>While every breath, by respiration strong<br>Forced downward, is consolidated soon<br>Upon their jutting chests. He, form’d to bear<br>The pelting brunt of the tempestuous night,<br>With half-shut eyes, and pucker’d cheeks, and teeth<br>Presented bare against the storm, plods on.<br>One hand secures his hat, save when with both<br>He brandishes his pliant length of whip,<br>Resounding oft, and never heard in vain.<br>O happy; and, in my account, denied<br>That sensibility of pain with which<br>Refinement is endued, thrice happy thou!<br>Thy frame, robust and hardy, feels indeed<br>The piercing cold, but feels it unimpair’d.<br>The learned finger never need explore<br>Thy vigorous pulse; and the unhealthful east,<br>That breathes the spleen, and searches every bone<br>Of the infirm, is wholesome air to thee.<br>Thy days roll on exempt from household care;<br>Thy waggon is thy wife, and the poor beasts,<br>That drag the dull companion to and fro,<br>Thine helpless charge, dependent on thy care.<br>Ah, treat them kindly! rude as thou appear’st, <br>Yet show that thou hast mercy! which the great,<br>With needless hurry whirl’d from place to place,<br>Humane as they would seem, not always show.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Poor, yet industrious, modest, quiet, neat,<br>Such claim compassion in a night like this,<br>And have a friend in every feeling heart.<br>Warm’d, while it lasts, by labour all day long,<br>They brave the season, and yet find at eve,<br>Ill clad, and fed but sparely, time to cool.<br>The frugal housewife trembles when she lights<br>Her scanty stock of brushwood, blazing clear,<br>But dying soon, like all terrestrial joys.<br>The few small embers left she nurses well;<br>And, while her infant race, with outspread hands,<br>And crowded knees, sit cowering o’er the sparks,<br>Retires, content to quake, so they be warm’d.<br>The man feels least, as more inured than she<br>To winter, and the current in his veins<br>More briskly moved by his severer toil;<br>Yet he too finds his own distress in theirs.<br>The taper soon extinguish’d, which I saw<br>Dangled along at the cold finger’s end<br>Just when the day declined; and the brown loaf<br>Lodged on the shelf, half eaten without sauce<br>Of savoury cheese, or butter, costlier still;<br>Sleep seems their only refuge: for, alas!<br>Where penury is felt the thought is chain’d,<br>And sweet colloquial pleasures are but few!<br>With all this thrift they thrive not. All the care,<br>Ingenious Parsimony takes, but just<br>Saves the small inventory, bed, and stool,<br>Skillet, and old carved chest, from public sale.<br>They live, and live without extorted alms<br>From grudging hands; but other boast have none<br>To soothe their honest pride, that scorns to beg,<br>Nor comfort else, but in their mutual love.<br>I praise you much, ye meek and patient pair,<br>For ye are worthy; choosing rather far<br>A dry but independent crust, hard earn’d,<br>And eaten with a sigh, than to endure<br>The rugged frowns and insolent rebuffs<br>Of knaves in office, partial in the work<br>Of distribution, liberal of their aid<br>To clamorous importunity in rags,<br>But ofttimes deaf to suppliants, who would blush<br>To wear a tatter’d garb however coarse,<br>Whom famine cannot reconcile to filth:<br>These ask with painful shyness, and refused<br>Because deserving, silently retire!<br>But be ye of good courage! Time itself<br>Shall much befriend you. Time shall give increase;<br>And all your numerous progeny, well train’d,<br>But helpless, in few years shall find their hands,<br>And labour too. Meanwhile ye shall not want<br>What, conscious of your virtues, we can spare,<br>Nor what a wealthier than ourselves may send.<br>I mean the man who, when the distant poor<br>Need help, denies them nothing but his name.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">But poverty with most, who whimper forth<br>Their long complaints, is self-inflicted woe;<br>The effect of laziness or sottish waste.<br>Now goes the nightly thief prowling abroad<br>For plunder; much solicitous how best<br>He may compensate for a day of sloth<br>By works of darkness and nocturnal wrong.<br>Woe to the gardener’s pale, the farmer’s hedge,<br>Plash’d neatly, and secured with driven stakes<br>Deep in the loamy bank! Uptorn by strength,<br>Resistless in so bad a cause, but lame<br>To better deeds, he bundles up the spoil,<br>An ass’s burden, and, when laden most<br>And heaviest, light of foot steals fast away;<br>Nor does the boarded hovel better guard<br>The well-stack’d pile of riven logs and roots<br>From his pernicious force. Nor will he leave<br>Unwrench’d the door, however well secured,<br>Where Chanticleer amidst his harem sleeps<br>In unsuspecting pomp. Twitch’d from the perch,<br>He gives the princely bird, with all his wives,<br>To his voracious bag, struggling in vain,<br>And loudly wondering at the sudden change.<br>Nor this to feed his own. ‘Twere some excuse,<br>Did pity of their sufferings warp aside<br>His principle, and tempt him into sin<br>For their support, so destitute. But they<br>Neglected pine at home; themselves, as more<br>Exposed than others, with less scruple made<br>His victims, robb’d of their defenceless all.<br>Cruel is all he does. ‘Tis quenchless thirst<br>Of ruinous ebriety that prompts<br>His every action, and imbrutes the man.<br>O for a law to noose the villain’s neck<br>Who starves his own; who persecutes the blood<br>He gave them in his children’s veins, and hates<br>And wrongs the woman he has sworn to love!</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Pass where we may, through city or through town,<br>Village, or hamlet, of this merry land,<br>Though lean and beggar’d, every twentieth pace<br>Conducts the unguarded nose to such a whiff<br>Of stale debauch, forth issuing from the styes<br>That law has licensed, as makes temperance reel.<br>There sit, involved and lost in curling clouds<br>Of Indian fume, and guzzling deep, the boor,<br>The lackey, and the groom: the craftsman there<br>Takes a Lethean leave of all his toil;<br>Smith, cobbler, joiner, he that plies the shears,<br>And he that kneads the dough; all loud alike,<br>All learned, and all drunk! the fiddle screams<br>Plaintive and piteous, as it wept and wail’d<br>Its wasted tones and harmony unheard:<br>Fierce the dispute, whate’er the theme; while she,<br>Fell Discord, arbitress of such debate,<br>Perch’d on the sign-post, holds with even hand<br>Her undecisive scales. In this she lays<br>A weight of ignorance; in that, of pride;<br>And smiles delighted with the eternal poise.<br>Dire is the frequent curse, and its twin sound,<br>The cheek-distending oath, not to be praised<br>As ornamental, musical, polite,<br>Like those which modern senators employ,<br>Whose oath is rhetoric, and who swear for fame!<br>Behold the schools in which plebeian minds,<br>Once simple, are initiated in arts,<br>Which some may practise with politer grace,<br>But none with readier skill!—’tis here they learn<br>The road that leads from competence and peace<br>To indigence and rapine; till at last<br>Society, grown weary of the load,<br>Shakes her encumber’d lap, and casts them out.<br>But censure profits little: vain the attempt<br>To advertise in verse a public pest,<br>That, like the filth with which the peasant feeds<br>His hungry acres, stinks, and is of use.<br>The excise is fatten’d with the rich result<br>Of all this riot; and ten thousand casks,<br>For ever dribbling out their base contents,<br>Touch’d by the Midas finger of the state,<br>Bleed gold for ministers to sport away.<br>Drink, and be mad then; ‘tis your country bids!<br>Gloriously drunk, obey the important call!<br>Her cause demands the assistance of your throat;—<br>Ye all can swallow, and she asks no more.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Would I had fallen upon those happier days,<br>That poets celebrate; those golden times,<br>And those Arcadian scenes, that Maro sings,<br>And Sidney, warbler of poetic prose.<br>Nymphs were Dianas then, and swains had hearts<br>That felt their virtues: Innocence, it seems,<br>From courts dismiss’d, found shelter in the groves;<br>The footsteps of Simplicity, impress’d<br>Upon the yielding herbage (so they sing)<br>Then were not all effaced: then speech profane<br>And manners profligate were rarely found,<br>Observed as prodigies, and soon reclaim’d.<br>Vain wish! those days were never: airy dreams<br>Sat for the picture: and the poet’s hand,<br>Imparting substance to an empty shade,<br>Imposed a gay delirium for a truth.<br>Grant it:—I still must envy them an age<br>That favour’d such a dream; in days like these<br>Impossible, when Virtue is so scarce,<br>That to suppose a scene where she presides,<br>Is tramontane, and stumbles all belief.<br>No: we are polish’d now! The rural lass,<br>Whom once her virgin modesty and grace,<br>Her artless manners, and her neat attire,<br>So dignified, that she was hardly less<br>Than the fair shepherdess of old romance,<br>Is seen no more. The character is lost!<br>Her head, adorn’d with lappets pinn’d aloft,<br>And ribands streaming gay, superbly raised,<br>And magnified beyond all human size,<br>Indebted to some smart wig-weaver’s hand<br>For more than half the tresses it sustains;<br>Her elbows ruffled, and her tottering form<br>Ill propp’d upon French heels; she might be deem’d<br>(But that the basket dangling on her arm<br>Interprets her more truly) of a rank<br>Too proud for dairy work, or sale of eggs.<br>Expect her soon with footboy at her heels,<br>No longer blushing for her awkward load,<br>Her train and her umbrella all her care!</div><div style="margin:10px 0">The town has tinged the country; and the stain<br>Appears a spot upon a vestal’s robe,<br>The worse for what it soils. The fashion runs<br>Down into scenes still rural; but, alas!<br>Scenes rarely graced with rural manners now!<br>Time was when in the pastoral retreat<br>The unguarded door was safe; men did not watch<br>To invade another’s right, or guard their own.<br>Then sleep was undisturb’d by fear, unscared<br>By drunken howlings; and the chilling tale<br>Of midnight murder was a wonder heard<br>With doubtful credit, told to frighten babes.<br>But farewell now to unsuspicious nights,<br>And slumbers unalarm’d! Now, ere you sleep,<br>See that your polish’d arms be primed with care,<br>And drop the night bolt;—ruffians are abroad;<br>And the first ‘larum of the cock’s shrill throat<br>May prove a trumpet, summoning your ear<br>To horrid sounds of hostile feet within.<br>E’en daylight has its dangers; and the walk<br>Through pathless wastes and woods, unconscious once<br>Of other tenants than melodious birds,<br>Or harmless flocks, is hazardous and bold.<br>Lamented change! to which full many a cause<br>Inveterate, hopeless of a cure, conspires.<br>The course of human things from good to ill,<br>From ill to worse, is fatal, never fails.<br>Increase of power begets increase of wealth;<br>Wealth luxury, and luxury excess;<br>Excess, the scrofulous and itchy plague,<br>That seizes first the opulent, descends<br>To the next rank contagious, and in time<br>Taints downward all the graduated scale<br>Of order, from the chariot to the plough.<br>The rich, and they that have an arm to check<br>The licence of the lowest in degree,<br>Desert their office; and themselves, intent<br>On pleasure, haunt the capital, and thus<br>To all the violence of lawless hands<br>Resign the scenes their presence might protect.<br>Authority herself not seldom sleeps,<br>Though resident, and witness of the wrong.<br>The plump convivial parson often bears<br>The magisterial sword in vain, and lays<br>His reverence and his worship both to rest<br>On the same cushion of habitual sloth.<br>Perhaps timidity restrains his arm;<br>When he should strike he trembles, and sets free,<br>Himself enslaved by terror of the band,<br>The audacious convict, whom he dares not bind.<br>Perhaps, though by profession ghostly pure,<br>He too may have his vice, and sometimes prove<br>Less dainty than becomes his grave outside<br>In lucrative concerns. Examine well<br>His milk-white hand; the palm is hardly clean—<br>But here and there an ugly smutch appears.<br>Foh! ‘twas a bribe that left it: he has touch’d<br>Corruption! Whoso seeks an audit here<br>Propitious, pays his tribute, game or fish,<br>Wildfowl or venison, and his errand speeds.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">But faster far, and more than all the rest,<br>A noble cause, which none who bears a spark<br>Of public virtue, ever wish’d removed,<br>Works the deplored and mischievous effect.<br>‘Tis universal soldiership has stabb’d<br>The heart of merit in the meaner class.<br>Arms, through the vanity and brainless rage<br>Of those that bear them, in whatever cause,<br>Seem most at variance with all moral good,<br>And incompatible with serious thought.<br>The clown, the child of nature, without guile,<br>Blest with an infant’s ignorance of all<br>But his own simple pleasures; now and then<br>A wrestling-match, a foot-race, or a fair;<br>Is balloted, and trembles at the news:<br>Sheepish he doffs his hat, and mumbling swears<br>A bible-oath to be whate’er they please,<br>To do he knows not what. The task perform’d,<br>That instant he becomes the serjeant’s care,<br>His pupil, and his torment, and his jest.<br>His awkward gait, his introverted toes,<br>Bent knees, round shoulders, and dejected looks,<br>Procure him many a curse. By slow degrees<br>Unapt to learn, and form’d of stubborn stuff,<br>He yet by slow degrees puts off himself,<br>Grows conscious of a change, and likes it well:<br>He stands erect; his slouch becomes a walk;<br>He steps right onward, martial in his air,<br>His form, and movement; is as smart above<br>As meal and larded locks can make him; wears<br>His hat, or his plumed helmet, with a grace;<br>And, his three years of heroship expired,<br>Returns indignant to the slighted plough.<br>He hates the field, in which no fife or drum<br>Attends him; drives his cattle to a march;<br>And sighs for the smart comrades he has left.<br>‘Twere well if his exterior change were all—<br>But with his clumsy port the wretch has lost<br>His ignorance and harmless manners too.<br>To swear, to game, to drink; to show at home,<br>By lewdness, idleness, and Sabbath beach,<br>The great proficiency he made abroad;<br>To astonish and to grieve his gazing friends;<br>To break some maiden’s and his mother’s heart;<br>To be a pest where he was useful once;<br>Are his sole aim, and all his glory now.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Man in society is like a flower<br>Blown in its native bed: ‘tis there alone<br>His faculties, expanded in full bloom,<br>Shine out; there only reach their proper use.<br>But man, associated and leagued with man<br>By regal warrant, or self-join’d by bond<br>For interest sake, or swarming into clans<br>Beneath one head for purposes of war,<br>Like flowers selected from the rest, and bound<br>And bundled close to fill some crowded vase,<br>Fades rapidly, and, by compression marr’d,<br>Contracts defilement not to be endured.<br>Hence charter’d burghs are such public plagues;<br>And burghers, men immaculate perhaps<br>In all their private functions, once combined,<br>Become a loathsome body, only fit<br>For dissolution, hurtful to the main.<br>Hence merchants, unimpeachable of sin<br>Against the charities of domestic life,<br>Incorporated, seem at once to lose<br>Their nature; and, disclaiming all regard<br>For mercy and the common rights of man,<br>Build factories with blood, conducting trade<br>At the sword’s point, and dyeing the white robe<br>Of innocent commercial Justice red.<br>Hence too the field of glory, as the world<br>Misdeems it, dazzled by its bright array,<br>With all its majesty of thundering pomp,<br>Enchanting music and immortal wreaths,<br>Is but a school where thoughtlessness is taught<br>On principle, where foppery atones <br>For folly, gallantry for every vice.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">But slighted as it is, and by the great<br>Abandon’d, and, which still I more regret,<br>Infected with the manners and the modes<br>It knew not once, the country wins me sill.<br>I never framed a wish, or form’d a plan,<br>That flatter’d me with hopes of earthly bliss,<br>But there I laid the scene. There early stray’d<br>My fancy, ere yet liberty of choice<br>Had found me, or the hope of being free.<br>My very dreams were rural; rural too<br>The firstborn efforts of my youthful muse,<br>Sportive, and jingling her poetic bells<br>Ere yet her ear was mistress of their powers.<br>No bard could please me but whose lyre was tuned<br>To Nature’s praises. Heroes and their feats<br>Fatigued me, never weary of the pipe<br>Of Tityrus, assembling, as he sang,<br>The rustic throng beneath his favourite beech.<br>Then Milton had indeed a poet’s charms:<br>New to my taste, his Paradise surpass’d<br>The struggling efforts of my boyish tongue<br>To speak its excellence. I danced for joy.<br>I marvell’d much that, at so ripe an age<br>As twice seven years, his beauties had then first<br>Engaged my wonder; and admiring still,<br>And still admiring, with regret supposed<br>The joy half lost, because not sooner found.<br>There too, enamour’d of the life I loved,<br>Pathetic in its praise, in its pursuit<br>Determined, and possessing it at last,<br>With transports, such as favour’d lovers feel,<br>I studied, prized, and wish’d that I had known<br>Ingenious Cowley! and, though now reclaim’d<br>By modern lights from an erroneous taste,<br>I cannot but lament thy splendid wit<br>Entangled in the cobwebs of the schools.<br>I still revere thee, courtly though retired;<br>Though stretch’d at ease in Chertsey’s silent bowers,<br>Not unemployed; and finding rich amends<br>For a lost world in solitude and verse.<br>‘Tis born with all: the love of Nature’s works<br>Is an ingredient in the compound man,<br>Infused at the creation of the kind.<br>And, though the Almighty Maker has throughout<br>Discriminated each from each, by strokes<br>And touches of his hand, with so much art<br>Diversified, that two were never found<br>Twins at all points—yet this obtains in all,<br>That all discern a beauty in his works,<br>And all can taste them: minds that have been form’d<br>And tutor’d, with a relish more exact,<br>But none without some relish, none unmoved.<br>It is a flame that dies not even there<br>Where nothing feeds it: neither business, crowds,<br>Nor habits of luxurious city life,<br>Whatever else they smother of true worth<br>In human bosoms, quench it or abate.<br>The villas with which London stands begirt<br>Like a swarth Indian with his belt of beads<br>Prove it. A breath of unadulterate air,<br>The glimpse of a green pasture, how they cheer<br>The citizen, and brace his languid frame!<br>E’en in the stifling bosom of the town<br>A garden, in which nothing thrives, has charms<br>That soothe the rich possessor; much consoled, <br>That here and there some sprigs of mournful mint,<br>Of nightshade, or valerian, grace the well<br>He cultivates. These serve him with a hint <br>That Nature lives; that sight-refreshing green<br>Is still the livery she delights to wear,<br>Though sickly samples of the exuberant whole.<br>What are the casements lined with creeping herbs,<br>The prouder sashes fronted with a range<br>Of orange, myrtle, or the fragrant weed,<br>The Frenchman’s darling? are they not all proofs<br>That man, immured in cities, still retains<br>His inborn inextinguishable thirst<br>Of rural scenes, compensating his loss<br>By supplemental shifts, the best he may,<br>The most unfurnish’d with the means of life,<br>And they that never pass their brick-wall bounds,<br>To range the fields and treat their lungs with air,<br>Yet feel the burning instinct: over head <br>Suspend their crazy boxes, planted thick,<br>And water’d duly. There the pitcher stands,<br>A fragment, and the spoutless teapot there;<br>Sad witnesses how close-pent man regrets<br>The country, with what ardour he contrives<br>A peep at Nature, when he can no more.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Hail, therefore, patroness of health and ease,<br>And contemplation, heart-consoling joys,<br>And harmless pleasures, in the throng’d abode<br>Of multitudes unknown! hail, rural life!<br>Address himself who will to the pursuit <br>Of honours, or emolument, or fame;<br>I shall not add myself to such a chase,<br>Thwart his attempts, or envy his success.<br>Some must be great. Great offices will have<br>Great talents. And God gives to every man<br>The virtue, temper, understanding, taste,<br>That lifts him into life, and lets him fall<br>Just in the niche he was ordain’d to fill.<br>To the deliverer of an injured land<br>He gives a tongue to enlarge upon, a heart<br>To feel, and courage to redress her wrongs;<br>To monarchs dignity; to judges sense;<br>To artists ingenuity and skill;<br>To me an unambitious mind, content<br>In the low vale of life, that early felt<br>A wish for ease and leisure, and ere long<br>Found here that leisure and that ease I wish’d.</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> <img src="https://www.citatepedia.ro/g/32share.png" style="float:left" alt="Share"> <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=537919" data-title="The Task: Book IV. -- The Winter Evening de William Cowper" data-description="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 spatter’d boo..."></div> </div> </div>

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