Oh 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

With stripes, that mercy, with a bleeding heart,

Weeps when he 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

LIBERTY.

'Tis liberty alone that gives the flower Of fleeting life its luster 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 eyesight of discovery; and begets, In those that suffer it, a sordid mind Bestial, a meager intellect, unfit To be the tenant of man's noble form.

SPIRITUAL LIBERTY.

But there is yet a liberty, unsung By poets, and by senators unpraised, Which monarchs can not 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 man.

kind,

And all are slaves beside. There's not a
chain,

That hellish foes, confederate for his harm,
Can wind around him, but he casts it off
With as much ease as Sampson his green
withes.

He looks abroad into the varied field
Of nature, and, though poor perhaps compared
With those whose mansions glitter in his sight,
Calls the delightful scenery all his own.
His are the mountains, and the valleys his,
And the resplendent rivers. His to enjoy
With a propriety that none can feel,
But who, with filial confidence inspired,
Can lift to heaven an unpresumptuous eye,
And smiling say, "My father made them al!!"
Are they not his by a peculiar right,
And by an emphasis of interest his,
Whose eye they fill with tears of holy joy,
Whose heart with praise, and whose exalted
mind

With worthy thoughts of that unwearied love That planned, and built, and still upholds a world

So clothed with beauty for rebellious man?
Yes-ye may fill your garners, ye that reap
The loaded soil, and ye may waste much good
In senseless riot; but ye will not find,
In feast, or in the chase, in song or dance,
A liberty like his, who, unimpeached
Of usurpation, and to no man's wrong,
Appropriates nature as his Father's work,
And has a richer use of yours than you.
He is indeed a freeman. Free by birth
Of no mean city; planned or ere the hills
Were built, the fountains opened, or the sea
With all its roaring multitude of waves.
His freedom is the same in every state;
And no condition of this changeful life,
So manifold in cares, whose every day
Brings its own evil with it, makes it less;
For he has wings that neither sickness, pain,
Nor penury, can cripple or confine.

No nook so narrow but he spreads them there
With ease, and is at large. The oppressor

holds

Till then unfelt, what hands divine have wrought.

Brutes graze the mountain-top, with faces prone

And eyes intent upon the scanty herb
It vields them; or, recumbent on its brow,
Ruminate heedless of the scene outspread
Beneath, beyond, and stretching far away
From inland regions to the distant main.
Man views it and admires; but rests content
With what he views. The landscape has his
praise,

But not its author. Unconcerned who formed
The paradise he sees, he finds it such,
And such well pleased to find it, asks no more.
Not so the mind that has been touched from
heaven,

And in the school of sacred wisdom taught
To read his wonders, in whose thought the
world,

Fair as it is, existed ere it was.
Not for its own sake merely, but for his
Much more who fashioned it, he gives it praise;
Praise that, from earth resulting, as it ought,
To earth's acknowledged Sovereign, finds at

The very kine that gambol at high noon,
The total herd receiving first from one
That leads the dance a summons to be gay,
Though wild their strange vagaries, and un-
couth

Teir efforts, yet resolved with one consent
To give such act an utterance as they may
To ecstasy too g to be suppressed-
These, and a thousand images of bliss,
With which kind nature graces every scene,
Where cruel man defeats not her design,
Impart to the benevolent, who wish
All that are capable of pleasure pleased,
A far superior happiness to theirs,
The comfort of a reasonable joy.

Man scarce had risen, obedient to his call Who formed him from the dust, his future grave,

When he was crowned as never king was since.

God set the diadem upon his head,

And angel choirs attended. Wondering stood The new-made monarch, while before him passed,

All happy, all perfect in their kind;

The creatures summoned from their various haunts

To see their sovereign and confess his sway.
Vast was his empire, absolute his power,
Or bounded only by a law, whose force
'T was his sublimest privilege to feel
And own-the law of universal love.

MAN'S INDEBTEDNESS TO ANIMALS. Distinguished much by reason, and still

more

By our capacity of grace divine,

From creatures that exist but for our sake,
Which, having served us, perish, we are held
Accountable; and God, some future day,
Will reckon with us roundly for the abuse
Of what he deems no mean or trivial trust.
Superior as we are, they yet depend
Not more on human help than we on theirs.
Their strength, or speed, or vigilance were given

In aid of our defects. In some are found
Such teachable and apprehensive parts,
That man's attainments in his own concerns,
Matched with the expertness of the brute's in
theirs,

Are ofttimes vanquished and thrown far be

hind.

Some show that nice sagacity of smell,
And read with such discernment, in the port
And figure of the man, his secret aim,
That oft we owe our safety to a skill

We could not teach, and must despair to learn,

But learn we might, if not too proud to stoop
To quadruped instructors, many a good
And useful quality, and virtue too,
Rarely exemplified among ourselves.
Attachment never to be weaned, or changed
By any change of fortune; proof alike
Against unkindness, absense, and neglect;
Fidelity, that neither bribe nor threat
Can move or warp; and gratitude for small
And trivial favors lasting as the life,
And glistening even in the dying eye.

THE HAPPY MAN.

He is the happy man, whose life e'en now Shows somewhat of that happier lie to come; Who, doomed to an obscure but tranquil state, Is pleased with it, and, were he free to choose, Would make his fate his choice; whom peace, the fruit

Of virtue, and whom virtue, fruit of faith,
Prepare for happiness; bespeak him one
Content, indeed, to sojourn while he must
Below the skies, but having there his home.
The world o'erlooks him in her busy search,
Of objects more illustrious in her view;
And, occupied as earnestly as she,
Though more sublimely, he o'erlooks the
world.

She scorns his pleasures, for she knows them

She makes familiar with a heaven unseen,
And shows him glories yet to be revealed.
Not slothful he, though seeming unemployed,
And censured oft as useless. Stillest streams
Oft water fairest meadows, and the bird
That Autters least is longest on the wing.
Ask him, indeed, what trophies he has raised,
Or what achievements of immortal fame
He purposes, and he shall answer-None.
His warfare is within. There unfatigued
His fervent spirit labors. There he fights,
And there obtains fresh triumphs o'er himself,
And never withering wreaths, compared with

which

The laurels that a Cæsar reaps are weeds. Perhaps the self-approving haughty world, That as she sweeps him with her whistling silks

Scarce deigns to notice him, or if she see,

Deems him a cipher in the works of God,
Receives advantage from his noiseless hours,
Of which she little dreams. Perhaps she owes
Her sunshine and her rain, her blooming spring
And plenteous harvest, to the prayer he makes,
When, Isaac like, the solitary saint
Walks forth to meditate at even-tide,
And think on her, who thinks not for herself.
Forgive him, then, thou bustler in concerns
Of little worth, an idler in the best,
If, author of no mischief and some good,
Ile seek his proper happiness by means
That may advance, but can not hinder thine.
Nor, though he tread the secret path of life,
Engage no notice, and enjoy much ease,
Account him an incumbrance on the state,
Receiving benefits, and rendering none.
His sphere though humble, if that humble
sphere

Shine with his fair example, and though small
His influence, if that influence all be spent
In soothing sorrow and in quenching strife,
In aiding helpless indigence, in works
From which at least a grateful few derive
Some taste of comfort in a world of woe,
Then let the supercilious great confess
He serves his country, recompenses well
The state, beneath the shadow of whose vine
He sits secure, and in the scale of life
Holds no ignoble, though a slighted place.
The man, whose virtues are more felt than
seen,

Must drop, indeed, the hope of public praise;
But he may boast what few that win it can-
That if his country stand not by his skill,
At least his follies have not wrought her fall.
Polite refinement offers him in vain
Her golden tube, through which a sensual
world

Draws gross impurity, and likes it well,
The neat conveyance hiding all the offense.
Not that he peevishly rejects a mode
Because the world adopts it. If it bear
The stamp and clear impression of good sense,
And be not costly more than of true worth,
He puts it on, and for decorum sake,
Can wear it e'en as gracefully as she.
She judges refinement by the eye,
He by the test of conscience, and a heart
Not soon deceived: aware that what is base
No polish can make sterling; and that vice,
Though well perfumed and elegantly dressed,
Like an unburied carcass tricked with flowers,
Is but a garnished nuisance, fitter far
For cleanly riddance than for fair attire.
So life glides smoothly and by stealth away,
More golden than that age of fabled gold