Processions form'd for piety and love; A mistress, or a saint, in every grove. By sports like these are all their cares beguil'd.... Each nobler aim, represt by long controul, In happier meanness occupy the `mind: As in those domes, where Cæsars once bore sway, Defac'd by time, and tott'ring in decay, There in the ruin, heedless of the dead, The shelter-seeking peasant builds his shed; My soul, turn from them; turn we to survey Where rougher climes a nobler race display, Where the bleak Swiss their stormy mansion tread, And force a churlish soil for scanty bread; No product here the barren hills afford, But man and steel, the soldier and his sword. G No vernal blooms their torpid rocks array, Yet still, e'en here, content can spread a charm, Redress the clime, and all its rage disarm. Tho' poor the peasant's hut, his feasts tho' small, He sees his little lot the lot of all; Sees no contiguous palace rear its head, To shame the meanness of his humble shed; No costly lord the sumptuous banquet deal, To make him loath his vegetable meal; With patient angle trolls the finny deep, Or drives his vent'rous ploughshare to the steep; Or seeks the den where snow-tracks mark the way, And drags the struggling savage into day. And night returning, every labour sped, Smiles by his cheerful fire, and round surveys Thus every good his native wilds impart, And e'en those hills, that round his mansion rise, Enhance the bliss his scanty fund supplies: Dear is that shed to which his soul conforms, And dear that hill which lifts him to the storms; And as a child, when scaring sounds molest, Clings close and closer to the mother's breast, So the loud torrent, and the whirlwind's roar, But bind him to his native mountains more. Such are the charms to barren states assign'd; Their wants but few, their wishes all confin'd: Yet let them only share the praises due.... 1 If few their wants, their pleasures are but few; For every want that stimulates the breast, Becomes a source of pleasure when redrest. Whence from such lands each pleasing science flies, That first excites desire, and then supplies; Unknown to them when sensual pleasures cloy, To fill the languid pause with finer joy; Unknown those powers that raise the soul to flame, Unquench'd by want, unfann'd by strong desire; On some high festival of once a year, In wild excess the vulgar breast takes fire, Till, bury'd in debauch, the bliss expire. But not their joys alone thus coarsely flow; Their morals, like their pleasures, are but low; For, as refinement stops, from sire to son Unalter'd, unimprov'd, the manners run; And love's and friendship's finely-pointed dart Fall blunted from each indurated heart. Some sterner virtues o'er the mountain's breast May sit, like falcons cowering on the nest; But all the gentler morals, such as play Through life's more cultur'd walks, and charm the way, These, far dispers'd, on timorous pinions fly, To sport and flutter in a kinder sky. To kinder skies, where gentler manners reign, I turn; and France displays her bright domain.... Gay sprightly land of mirth and social ease, Pleas'd with thyself, whom all the world can please, How often have I led thy sportive choir, With tuneless pipe, beside the murmuring Loire! |