Ye ever-tempting, ever-cheating train !
Where are you now? and what is your amount ? Vexation, disappointment, and remorse.
Sad, sickening thought! and yet deluded Man, A scene of crude disjointed visions past, And broken slumbers, rises still resolved, With new-flushed hopes, to run the giddy round. FATHER of light and life, thou Good Supreme! O teach me what is good! teach me Thyself! Save me from folly, vanity, and vice,
From every low pursuit! and feed my soul
With knowledge, conscious peace, and virtue pure; Sacred, substantial, never-fading bliss!
The keener tempests rise and fuming dun
From all the livid east, or piercing north,
Thick clouds ascend; in whose capacious womb
A vapoury deluge lies, to snow congealed.
Heavy they roll their fleecy world along;
And the sky saddens with the gathered storm.
Thro' the hushed air the whitening shower descends, At first thin wavering; till at last the flakes Fall broad, and wide, and fast, dimming the day, With a continual flow. The cherished fields
Put on their winter-robe of purest white.
'Tis brightness all; save where the new snow melts Along the mazy current. Low, the woods
Bow their boar head; and, ere the languid sun Faint from the west emits his evening ray, Earth's universal face, deep hid, and chill, Is one wild dazzling waste, that buries wide The works of Man. Drooping, the labourer-ox Stands covered o'er with snow, and then demands The fruit of all his toil. The fowls of heaven,
Tamed by the cruel season, crowd around The winnowing store, and claim the little boon Which Providence assigns them. One alone, The red-breast, sacred to the household gods, Wisely regardful of th' embroiling sky, In joyless fields and thorny thickets leaves His shivering mates, and pays to trusted Man His annual visit. Half-afraid, he first
Against the window beats; then, brisk, alights
On the warm hearth; then, hopping o'er the floor, Eyes all the smiling family askance,
And pecks, and starts, and wonders where he is:
Till, more familiar grown, the table-crumbs Attract his slender feet. The foodless wilds Pour forth their brown inhabitants. The hare, Tho' timorous of heart, and hard beset
By death in various forms, dark snares, and dogs, And more unpitying Men, the garden seeks, Urged on by fearless want. The bleating kind Eye the bleak heaven, and next the glistening earth, With looks of dumb despair; then, sad-dispersed, Dig for the withered herb thro' heaps of snow.
Now, shepherds, to your helpless charge be kind, 265 Baffle the raging year, and fill their pens
With food at will; lodge them below the storm, And watch them strict: for from the bellowing east, In this dire season, oft the whirlwind's wing Sweeps up the burthen of whole wintry plains At one wide waft, and o'er the hapless flocks, Hid in the hollow of two neighbouring hills, The billowy tempest whelms ; till, upward urged, The valley to a shining mountain swells,
Tipt with a wreath high-curling in the sky.
As thus the snows arise; and foul, and fierce, All Winter drives along the darkened air; In his own loose-revolving fields, the swain Disastered stands,; sees other hills ascend, Of unknown joyless brow; and other scenes, Of horrid prospect, shag the trackless plain : Nor finds the river, nor the forest, hid
Beneath the formless wild; but wanders on From hill to dale, still more and more astray;
Impatient flouncing thro' the drifted heaps,
Stung with the thoughts of home; the thoughts of home Rush on his nerves, and call their vigour forth In many a vain attempt. How sinks his soul ! What black despair, what horror fills his heart! When for the dusky spot, which fancy feigned His tufted cottage rising thro' the snow, He meets the roughness of the middle waste, Far from the track, and blest abode of Man ; While round him night resistless closes fast, And every tempest, howling o'er his head, Renders the savage wilderness more wild. Then throng the busy shapes into his mind Of covered pits, unfathomably deep,
A dire descent! beyond the power of frost ;
Of faithless bogs; of precipices huge,
Smoothed up with snow; and, what is land, unknown, What water, of the still unfrozen spring,
In the loose marsh or solitary lake,
Where the fresh fountain from the bottom boils.
These check his fearful steps; and down he sinks Beneath the shelter of the shapeless drift,
Thinking o'er all the bitterness of death,
Mixt with the tender anguish Nature shoots Thro' the wrung bosom of the dying Man, His wife, his children, and his friends unseen, In vain for him th' officious wife prepares The fire fair-blazing, and the vestment warm; In vain his little children, peeping out
Into the mingling storm, demand their sire, With tears of artless innocence. Alas! Nor wife, nor children, more shall he behold,
Nor friends, nor sacred home. On every nerve
The deadly winter seizes; shuts up sense;
And, o'er his inmost vitals creeping cold, Lays him along the snows, a stiffened corse,
Stretched out, and bleaching in the northern blast! Ah little think the gay licentious proud,
Whom pleasure, power, and affluence surround;.
They, who their thoughtless hours in giddy mirth,
And wanton, often cruel, riot waste `;
Ah little think they, while they dance along,
How many feel, this very moment, death, And all the sad variety of pain.
How many sink in the devouring flood, Or more devouring flame. How many bleed, By shameful variance betwixt Man and Man. How many pine in want, and dungeon glooms; Shut from the common air, and common use Of their own limbs. How many drink the cup Of baleful grief, or eat the bitter bread Of misery. Sore pierced by wintry winds, How many shrink into the sordid hut Of cheerless poverty. How many shake With all the fiercer tortures of the mind,
Unbounded passion, madness, guilt, remorse ; Whence tumbled headlong from the height of life, They furnish matter for the tragic Muse. Even in the vale, where wisdom loves to dwell, With friendship, peace, and contemplation joined, How many, racked with honest passions, droop In deep retired distress, How many stand Around the death-bed of their dearest friends, And point the parting anguish.
Of these, and all the thousand nameless ills That one incessant struggle render life
One scene of toil, of suffering, and of fate,
Vice in his high career would stand appalled, And heedless rambling Impulse learn to think; The conscious heart of Charity would warm, And her wide wish Benevolence dilate; The social tear would rise, the social sigh; And into clear perfection, gradual bliss, Refining still, the social passions work.
And here can I forget the generous *band,
Who, touched with human woe, redressive searched 360 Into the horrors of the gloomy jail?
Unpitied, and unheard, where misery moans;
Where sickness pines; where thirst and hunger burn,
And poor misfortune feels the lash of vice.
While in the land of liberty, and land
Whose every street and public meeting glow
With open freedom, little tyrants raged;
Snatched the lean morsel from the starving mouth; Tore from cold wintry limbs the tattered weed; Even robbed them of the last of comforts, sleep;
* The Jail Committee, in the year 1729.
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