Now all's at rest--and ere the wearied swain Rise to his labour on the upland lawn, Shall not the muse from nature catch a strain, To wake, and greet him at the morning dawn?
Oh! let her tell him that the feeling heart, Oft to the mountain side by memory led, Shall seek those blessings wealth can ne'er impart, And wish to share the quiet of his shed:
Where ev'ry sordid passion lull'd to rest, Man knows each gift of nature how to prize: Flies from the storm unto his fair one's breast, And there reposing waits serener skies.
Say, ye proud sons of fortune and of power, Can aught the joys you feel, with these compare? Can the full triumph of ambition's hour, When tempests threaten, sooth your anxious care?
Or shall the tenant of yon lonely cot, That smiles with pity on your pageant state, Pleas'd with his poor but independent lot, Expose the wretchedness of being great?
Unknown to you, the houseless child of woe, The friendless pilgrim, or the hungry poor; Unleft the good ye carelessly bestow, The hand that feeds them, drives them from your door.
Here cruel charity no off'ring makes, That whilst it aids, insults the big distress, The heart that welcomes, ev'ry grief partakes, And only pities where it can't redress.
Such are the scenes, my dear Lord, such the hospitality I am now going to quit. I know not why I wished to jingle their virtues into rhyme, unless it was, that my prose began to run upon stilts, or that I mistook a momentary enthusiasm for a poetical inspiration. In fact, every thought and conception is so far raised above the common train of ideas, that the error is excusable, especially too when the imaginary poet sets out with
_Lady's Mag. and Repos._, I-253, May 1793, Phila.
_Weekly Museum_, VII, Mar. 14, 1795, N. Y.
[Also in _Boston Mag._, III-81, Feb. 1786, Boston.]
_Phila. Minerva_, I, May 16, 1795, Phila.
[Also in _Boston Mag._, III-81, Feb. 1786, Boston.]
_Rural Mag. or Vt. Repos._, I-494, Oct. 1795, Rutland.
[Same as _The Relaxation of War_ in _Amer. Mag. or Mo. Chron._, I-440, June 1758, Phila.]
For the Weekly Museum. THE GOTHIC CASTLE.
"The Days of Chivalry are gone." Burke's Letter on the French Revolution.
See! now the landscape fades away, As westward flies the orb of day: See the solemn night appear, With silence her sedate compeer.
