And all your numerous progeny, well-trained But helpless, in few years shall find their hands, And labour too. Meanwhile ye shall not want What, conscious of your virtues, we can spare, Nor what a wealthier than ourselves may fend. I mean the man, who, when the diftant poor Need help, denies them nothing but his name.
'But poverty with moft, who whimper forth
Their long complaints, is self-inflicted woe;
The effect of laziness or fottish wafte.
Now goes the nightly thief prowling abroad
For plunder; much folicitous how beft
He may compensate for a day of floth
By works of darkness and nocturnal wrong.
Woe to the gardener's pale, the farmer's hedge,
Plashed neatly, and secured with driven stakes
Deep in the loamy bank. Uptorn by ftrength,
Refiftlefs in fo bad a cause, but lame
To better deeds, he bundles up the spoil,
An afs's burden, and, when laden moft
And heavieft, light of foot steals faft away.
Nor does the boarded hovel better guard
The well-ftacked pile of riven logs and roots
From his pernicious force. Nor will he leave
Unwrenched the door, however well fecured,
Where Chanticleer amidst his haram sleeps
In unfufpecting pomp. Twitched from the perch,
He gives the princely bird, with all his wives,
To his voracious bag, ftruggling in vain,
And loudly wondering at the fudden change.
Nor this to feed his own. 'Twere fome excufe,
Did pity of their fufferings warp afide
His principle, and tempt him into fin
For their fupport, fo deftitute. But they
Neglected pine at home; themselves, as more
Expofed than others, with lefs fcruple made
His victims, robbed of their defenceless all.
Cruel is all he does. 'Tis quenchless thirst
Of ruinous ebriety, that prompts
His every action, and imbrutes the man.
Oh for a law to noose the villain's neck,
Who ftarves his own; who perfecutes the blood
He gave them in his children's veins, and hates
And wrongs the woman, he has fworn to love!
Pafs where we may, through city or through town, Village, or hamlet, of this merry land,
Though lean and beggared, every twentieth pace
Conducts the unguarded nose to such a whiff
Of ftale debauch, forth-iffuing from the ftyes,
That law has licensed, as makes temperance reel.
There fit, involved and loft in curling clouds
Of Indian fume, and guzzling deep, the boor,
The lackey, and the groom: the craftsman there
Takes a Lethean leave of all his toil;
Smith, cobbler, joiner, he that plies the fhears,
And he that kneads the dough; all loud alike,
All learned, and all drunk! The fiddle fcreams
Plaintive and piteous, as it wept and wailed
Its wafted tones and harmony unheard:
Fierce the difpute whate'er the theme; while fhe,
Fell Difcord, arbitrefs of fuch debate,
Perched on the fign-poft, holds with even hand
Her undecifive fcales. In this she lays
A weight of ignorance; in that, of pride;
And smiles delighted with the eternal poife.
Dire is the frequent curfe, and its twin found
The cheek-diftending oath, not to be praised
As ornamental, mufical, polite,
Like thofe, which modern fenators employ,
Whofe oath is rhetoric, and who fwear for fame!
Behold the schools, in which plebeian minds
Once fimple are initiated in arts,
Which fome may practise with politer grace,
But none with readier skill!-'tis here they learn
The road, that leads from competence and peace
To indigence and rapine; till at laft
Society, grown weary of the load,
Shakes her incumbered lap, and cafts them out.
But cenfure profits little: vain the attempt
To advertise in verfe a public peft,
That like the filth, with which the peasant feeds
His hungry acres, ftinks, and is of use.
The excife is fattened with the rich refult
Of all this riot; and ten thousand casks,
For ever dribbling out their base contents,
Touched by the Midas finger of the ftate,
Bleed gold for minifters to sport away.
Drink, and be mad then; 'tis your country bids!
Gloriously drunk obey the important call!
Her caufe demands the affiftance of
your throats ;Ye all can fwallow, and she asks no more.
Would I had fallen upon those happier days,
That poets celebrate; thofe golden times,
And thofe Arcadian fcenes, that Maro fings,
And Sidney, warbler of poetic profe.
Nymphs were Dianas then, and fwains had hearts,
That felt their virtues: innocence, it seems,
From courts difmiffed, found fhelter in the groves; The footsteps of fimplicity, impreffed
Upon the yielding herbage, (fo they fing)
Then were not all effaced: then speech profane,
And manners profligate, were rarely found;
Obferved as prodigies, and foon reclaimed.
Vain with! those days were never: airy dreams
Sat for the picture: and the poet's hand,
Imparting fubftance to an empty shade,
Impofed a gay delirium for a truth.
Grant it: I ftill muft envy them an age,
That favoured fuch a dream; in days like these
Impoffible, when virtue is fo scarce,
That to fuppofe a scene where the prefides,
Is tramontane, and stumbles all belief.
No: we are polished now. The rural lafs,
Whom once her virgin modefty and grace,
Her artlefs manners, and her neat attire,
So dignified, that she was hardly lefs
Than the fair fhepherdefs of old romance,
Is feen no more. The character is loft!
Her head, adorned with lappets pinned aloft,
And ribbands ftreaming gay, fuperbly raised,
And magnified beyond all human fize,
Indebted to fome fmart wig-weaver's hand
For more than half the treffes it fuftains;
Her elbows ruffled, and her tottering form
Ill propped upon French heels; the might be deemed (But that the basket dangling on her arm
Interprets her more truly) of a rank
Too proud for dairy work, or fale of eggs.
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