ON SLAVERY.

(From "The Task.")

On for a lodge in some vast wilderness,
Some boundless contiguity of shade,
Where rumor of oppression and deceit,
Of unsuccessful or successful war

Might never reach me more! My ear is pained,
My soul is sick with every day's report

Of wrong and outrage with which earth is filled. There is no flesh in man's obdurate heart

It does not feel for man; the natural bond

Of brotherhood is severed as the flax
That falls asunder at the touch of fire.

He finds his fellow guilty of a skin

Not colored like his own, and having power
To enforce the wrong, for such a worthy cause
Dooms and devotes him as his lawful prey.
Lands intersected by a narrow frith
Abhor each other. Mountains interposed,
Make enemies of nations, who had else
Like kindred drops been mingled into one.
Thus man devotes his brother, and destroys.
And worse than all, and most to be deplored
As human Nature's broadest, foulest blot,
Chains him, and tasks him, and exacts his sweat
With stripes, that Mercy with a bleeding heart
Weeps when she sees inflicted on a beast.
Then what is man? And what man, seeing this,
And having human feelings, does not blush
And hang his head, to think himself a man?
I would not have a slave to till my ground,

To carry me, to fan me while I sleep,
And tremble when I wake, for all the wealth
That sinews bought and sold have ever earned.
No: dear as freedom is, and in my heart's
Just estimation prized above all price,

I had much rather be myself the slave

And wear the bonds, than fasten them on him.

DOMESTIC HAPPINESS.

(From "The Task.")

DOMESTIC happiness, thou only bliss

Of Paradise that has survived the fall!

Though few now taste thee unimpaired and pure,

Or tasting long enjoy thee too infirm,

Or too incautious, to preserve thy sweets
Unmixed with drops of bitter, which neglect
Or temper sheds into thy crystal cup;

Thou art the nurse of Virtue, in thine arms
She smiles, appearing, as in truth she is,
Heaven-born, and destined to the skies again.
Thou art not known where Pleasure is adored,
That reeling goddess with the zoneless waist
And wandering eyes, still leaning on the arm
Of Novelty, her fickle, frail support;
For thou art meek and constant, hating change,
And finding in the calm of truth-tried love
Joys that her stormy raptures never yield.

TO WINTER.

(From "The Task.")

O WINTER! ruler of the inverted year,
Thy scattered hair with sleet like ashes filled,
Thy breath congealed upon thy lips, thy cheeks
Fringed with a beard made white with other snows
Than those of age, thy forehead wrapp'd in clouds,
A leafless branch thy sceptre, and thy throne

A sliding car, indebted to no wheels,

But urged by storms along its slippery way;

I love thee, all unlovely as thou seem'st,

And dreaded as thou art. Thou hold'st the sun
A prisoner in the yet undawning east,
Shortening his journey between morn and noon,
And hurrying him, impatient of his stay,
Down to the rosy west; but kindly still
Compensating his loss with added hours
Of social converse and instructive ease,
And gathering, at short notice, in one group
The family dispersed, and fixing thought,
Not less dispersed by daylight and its cares.
I crown thee King of intimate delights,
Fireside enjoyments, homeborn happiness,
And all the comforts that the lowly roof
Of undisturbed retirement, and the hours
Of long uninterrupted evening know.

THE GAMES OF KINGS.

(From "The Task.")

GREAT princes have great playthings. Some have play At hewing mountains into men, and some

At building human wonders mountain high.

Some have amused the dull sad years of life,
Life spent in indolence, and therefore sad,
With schemes of monumental fame; and sought
By pyramids and mausolean pomp,

Short-lived themselves, to immortalize their bones.
Some seek diversion in the tented field,

And make the sorrows of mankind their sport.

But war's a game, which,

Kings would not play at.

were their subjects wise,
Nations would do well

To extort their truncheons from the puny hands
Of heroes, whose infirm and baby minds
Are gratified with mischief, and who spoil,
Because men suffer it, their toy the world.

TRUE LIBERTY.

(From "The Task.")

THERE is yet a liberty unsung

By poets, and by senators unpraised,

Which monarchs cannot grant, nor all the powers
Of earth and hell confederate take away;
A liberty which persecution, fraud,
Oppression, prisons, have no power to bind;
Which whoso tastes can be enslaved no more;
"Tis liberty of heart, derived from Heaven,
Bought with His blood who gave it to mankind,
And sealed with the same token. It is held
By charter, and that charter sanctioned sure
By the unimpeachable and awful oath
And promise of a God. His other gifts

All bear the royal stamp that speaks them His,
And are august, but this transcends them all.

NOSE vs. EYES: in re SPECTACLES.
BETWEEN Nose and Eyes a strange contest arose,
The Spectacles set them unhappily wrong;
The point in dispute was, as all the world knows,
To which the said Spectacles ought to belong.
So Tongue was the lawyer, and argued the cause
With a great deal of skill, and a wig full of learning;
While Chief-Baron Ear sat to balance the laws,

So famed for his talent in nicely discerning.

"In behalf of the Nose it will quickly appear,

And your lordship," he said, "will undoubtedly find, That the Nose has had Spectacles always in wear, Which amounts to possession time out of mind."