Winter Evening in the Country.-From 'The Task.'

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 locks;
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;
I burn to set the imprisoned wranglers free,
And give them voice and utterance once again.
Now stir the fire, and close the shutters fast,
Let fall the curtains, wheel the sofa round,
And while the bubbling and loud-hissing urn
Throws up a steamy column, and the cups,
That cheer but not inebriate, wait on each,
So let us welcome peaceful evening in.
Not such his evening who, with shining face

My Mary!

Sweats in the crowded theatre, and squeezed
And bored with elbow-points through both his sides,
Out-scolds the ranting actor on the stage:

Nor his who patient stands till his feet throb,
And his head thumps, to feed upon the breath
Of patriots bursting with heroic rage,
Or placemen all tranquility and smiles.
This folio of four pages, happy work!
Which not even critics criticise; that holds
Inquisitive attention, while I read,

Fast bound in chains of silence, which the fair,
Though eloquent themselves, yet fear to break;
What is it but a map of busy life,

Its fluctuations, and its vast concerns?
Here runs the mountainous and craggy ridge
That tempts ambition. On the summit see
The seals of office glitter in his eyes;

He climbs, he pants, he grasps them! At his heels,
Close at his heels, a demagogue ascends,
And with a dexterous jerk soon twists him down,
And wins them but to lose them in his turn.

Here rills of oily eloquence, in soft
Meanders, lubricate the course they take;
The modest speaker is ashamed and grieved
To engross a moment's notice, and yet begs,
Begs a propitious ear for his poor thoughts,
However trivial all that he conceives.

Sweet bashfulness! it claims at least this praise,
The dearth of information and good sense
That it foretells us, always comes to pass.
Cataracts of declamation thunder here;
There forests of no meaning spread the page,
In which all comprehension wanders lost;
Whilst fields of pleasantry amuse us there,
With merry descants on a nation's woes.
The rest appears a wilderness of strange
But gay confusion; roses for the cheeks,
And lilies for the brows of faded age,

Teeth for the toothless, ringlets for the bald,
Heaven, earth, and ocean plundered of their sweets,

Nectareous essences, Olympian dews,

Sermons, and city feasts, and favourite airs,
Ethereal journeys, submarine exploits,

And Katterfelto,* with his hair on end

At his own wonders, wondering for his bread.
"Tis pleasant through the loopholes of retreat
To peep at such a world; to see the stir
Of the great Babel, and not feel the crowd;
To hear the roar she sends through all her gates
At a safe distance, where the dying sound
Falls a soft murmur on the uninjured ear.
Thus sitting, and surveying thus at ease
The globe and its concerns, I seem advanced
To some secure and more than mortal height,
That liberates and exempts me from them all.
Oh 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 wrapt in clouds,

* A noted conjuror of the day

...

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, home-born happiness,
And all the comforts that the lowly roof
Of undisturbed retirement, and the hours
Of long uninterrupted evening, know....
Come, Evening, once again, season of peace;
Return, sweet Evening, and continue long
Methinks I see thee in the streaky west,
With matron-step, slow-moving while the night
Treads on thy sweeping train; one hand employed
In letting fall the curtain of repose

On bird and beast, the other charged for man
With sweet oblivion of the cares of day:
Not sumptuously adorned, nor needing aid,
Like homely-featured Night, of clustering gems,
A star or two just twinkling on thy brow
Suffices thee; save that the moon is thine
No less than hers: not worn indeed on high
With ostentatious pageantry, but set

With modest grandeur in thy purple zone,
Resplendent less, but of an ampler round.
Come then, and thou shalt find thy votary calm,
Or make me so. Composure is thy gift;
And whether I devote thy gentle hours

To books, to music, or the poet's toil;

To weaving nets for bird-alluring fruit;

Or twining silken threads round ivory reels,

When they command whom man was born to please,

I slight thee not, but make thee welcome still."

Love of Nature.-From the same.

"Tis born with all: the love of Nature's works
Is an ingredient in the compound, man,
Infused at the creation of the kind.

And, though the Almighty Maker has throughout
Discriminated each from each, by strokes

And touches of his hand, with so much art

Diversified, that two were never found

Twins at all points-yet this obtains in all,

That all discern a beauty in his works.

And all can taste them: minds that have been formed

And tutored, with a relish more exact,

But none without some relish, none unmoved.

It is a flame that dies not even there,

Where nothing feeds it: neither business, crowds,

Nor habits of luxurious city life,

Whatever else they smother of true worth

In human bosoms, quench it or abate.
The villas with which London stands begirt,
Like a swarth Indian with his belt of beads,
Prove it. A breath of unadulterate air,
The glimpse of a green pasture, how they cheer
The citizen, and brace his languid frame!
Even in the stifling bosom of the town,

A garden in which nothing thrives, has charms
That soothe the rich possessor; much consoled
That here and there some sprigs of mournful mint,
Of nightshade or valerian, grace the wall
He cultivates. These serve him with a hint
That Nature lives; that sight-refreshing green
Is still the livery she delights to wear,

Though sickly samples of the exuberant whole.
What are the casements lined with creeping herbs,
The prouder sashes fronted with a range

Of orange, myrtle, or the fragrant weed,

The Frenchman's darling? Are they not all proofs That man, immured in cities, still retains

His inborn inextinguishable thirst

Of rural scenes, compensating his loss

By supplemental shifts the best he may?

The most unfurnished with the means of life,

And they that never pass their brick-wall bounds
To range the fields, and treat their lungs with air,
Yet feel the burning instinct; overhead
Suspend their crazy boxes, planted thick,
And watered duly. There the pitcher stands
A fragment, and the spoutless tea-pot there;
Sad witnesses how close-pent man regrets
The country, with what ardour he contrives
A peep at nature, when he can no more.

English Liberty.-From the same.

We love

The king who loves the law, respects his bounds,
And reigns content within them; him we serve.
Freely and with delight, who leaves us free:
But recollecting still that he is man,

We trust him not too far. King though he be,
And king in England too, he may be weak,
And vain enough to be ambitious still;
May exercise amiss his proper powers,
Or covet more than freemen choose to grant:
Beyond that mark is treason. He is ours
To administer, to guard, to adorn the state,
But not to warp or change it. We are his
To serve him nobly in the common cause,
True to the death, but not to be his slaves.
Mark now the difference, ye that boast your love
Of kings, between your loyalty and ours.
We love the man, the paltry pageant you;
We the chief patron of the commonwealth,
You the regardless author of its woes;
We, for the sake of liberty, a king,

You chains and bondage for a tyrant's sake;
Our love is principle, and has its root

In reason, is judicious, manly, free;

* Mignonette,

Yours, a blind instinct, crouches to the rod,
And licks the foot that treads it in the dust.
Were kingship as true treasure as it seems,
Sterling, and worthy of a wise man's wish,
I would not be a king to be beloved

...

Causeless, and daubed with undiscerning praise,
Where love is mere attachment to the throne,
Not to the man who fills it as he ought.
"Tis liberty alone that gives the flower
Of fleeting life its lustre and perfume;
And we are weeds without it. All constraint,
Except what wisdom lays on evil men,
Is evil; hurts the faculties, impedes

Their progress in the road of science, blinds
The eysight of discovery, and begets
In those that suffer it a sordid mind,

Bestial, a meagre intellect, unfit

To be the tenant of man's noble form.

Thee therefore still, blameworthy as thou art,
With all thy loss of empire, and though squeezed

By public exigence, till annual food

Fails for the craving hunger of the state,
Thee I account still happy, and the chief
Among the nations, seeing thou art free.
My native nook of earth! thy clime is rude,
Replete with vapours, and disposes much
All hearts to sadness, and none more than mine
Thine unadulterate manners are less soft
And plausible than social life requires,
And thou hast need of discipline and art
To give thee what politer France receives
From nature's bounty-that humane address
And sweetness, without which no pleasure is
In converse, either starved by cold reserve,
Or, flushed with fierce dispute, a senseless brawl.
Yet being free, I love thee: for the sake
Of that one feature can be well content,
Disgraced as thou hast been, poor as thou art,
To seek no sublunary rest beside.

But once enslaved, farewell! I could endure
Chains nowhere patiently; and chains at home,
Where I am free by birthright, not at all.
Then what were left of roughness in the grain
Of British natures, wanting its excuse
That it belongs to freemen, would disgust

And shock me. I should then with double pain
Feel all the rigour of thy fickle clime;

And, if I must bewail the blessing lost,

For which our Hampdens and our Sidneys bled,

I would at least bewail it under skies

Milder, among a people less austere;

In scenes which, having never known me free,

Would not reproach me with the loss I felt,

Do I forebode impossible events,

And tremble at vain dreams? Heaven grant I may!)

But the age of virtuous politics is past,

And we are deep in that of cold pretence.

Patriots are grown too shrewd to be sincere,

And we too wise to trust them. He that takes

Deep in his soft credulity the stamp

Designed by loud declaimers on the part

Of liberty, themselves the slaves of lust,