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 purfuit! and feed my foul
With knowledge, confcious peace, and virtue pure; Sacred, fubftantial, never fading bliss!
THE keener tempefts come: and fuming dun From all the livid eaft, or piercing north, Thick clouds afcend; in whofe capacious womb A vapoury deluge lies, to fnow congeal'd. Heavy they roll their fleecy world along; And the sky faddens with the gathered ftorm. Thro' the hush'd air the whitening shower defcends, At first thin wavering; 'till at last the flakes Fall broad, and wide, and faft, dimming the day, With a continual flow. The cherish'd fields Put on their winter - robe of pureft white.
'Tis brightness all; fave where the new fnow melts
Along the mazy current. Low, the woods
Bow their hoar head; and, ere the languid fun
Faint from the weft emits his evening ray,
Earth's univerfal face, deep hid, and chill,
Is one wild dazzling wafte, that buries wide
The works of Man. Drooping, the labourer - ox
Stands cover'd o'er with fnow, and then demands
The fruit of all his toil. The fowls of heaven,
Tam'd by the cruel season, croud around
The winnowing store, and claim the little boon
Which PROVIDENCE affigns them. One alone,
The red breaft, facred to the houshold gods,
Wifely regardful of th' embroiling sky,
In joyless fields, and thorny thickets, leaves
His shivering mates, and pays to trusted Man
His annual vifit. Half- afraid, he first
Against the window beats; then, brisk, alights
On the warm hearth; then, hopping o'er the floor,
Eyes all the fmiling family askance,
And pecks, and starts, and wonders where he is:
'Till more familiar grown, the table- crumbs
Attract his slender feet. The foodlefs wilds
Pour forth their brown inhabitants. The hare,
Tho' timorous of heart, and hard befet
By death in various forms, dark fnares, and dogs,
And more unpitying Men, the garden feeks,
Urg'd on by fearless want. The bleating kind
Eye the bleak heaven, and next the glistening earth,
With looks of dumb despair; then, fad - difpers'd,
Dig for the withered herb thro' heaps of fnow.
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 ftorm, And watch them ftrict; for from the bellowing eaft, In this dire feafon, oft the whirlwind's wing Sweeps up the burthen of whole wintry plains At one wide waft, and o'er the haplefs flocks, Hd in the hollow of two neighbouring hills, The billowy tempeft whelms; 'till, upward urg'd, The valley to a shining mountain fwells,
Tip: with a wreath, high- curling in the sky. 275
As thus the fnows arife; and foul, and fierce,
All Winter drives along the darkened air;
In his own loofe revolving fields, the swain
Difafter'd ftands; fees other hills afcend,
Of unknown joyless brow; and other fcenes,
Of horrid profpect, shag the trackless plain:
K 4
Nor finds the river, nor the foreft, hid
Beneath the formlefs wild; but wanders on
From hill to dale, ftill more and more aftray;
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 finks his foul!
What black despair, what horror fills his heart!
When for the dusky fpot, which fancy feign'd
His tufted cottage rifing thro' the fnow,
He meets the roughness of the middle wafte,
Far from the track, and bleft abode of Man;
While round him night refiftlefs clofes faft,
And every tempeft, howling o'er his head,
Renders the favage wilderness more wild,
Then throng the bufy shapes into his mind,
Of cover'd pits, unfathomably deep,
A dire descent! beyond the power of frost,
Of faithless bogs; of precipices huge,
Smooth'd up with fnow; and, what is land unknown, What water, of the ftill unfrozen fpring,
In the loose marsh or folitary lake,
Where the fresh fountain from the bottom boils.
These check his fearful fteps; and down he finks 305
Beneath the shelter of the shapeless drift,
Thinking o'er all the bitterness of death,
Mix'd with the tender anguish Nature shoots
Thro' the wrung bofom of the dying Man,
His wife, his children, and his friends unfeen,
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 ftorm, demand their fire,
With thears of artlefs Innocence, Alas!
Nor wife, nor children, more shall he behold,
Nor friends, nor facred home. On every nerve
The deadly Winter feizes; shuts up sense;
And, o'er his inmoft vitals creeping cold,
Lays him along the fnows, a ftiffened corfe,
Stretch'd out, and bleaching in the northern blaft.
АH little think the gay licentious proud,
Whom pleasure, power, and affluence furround;
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 fad variety of pain.
How many fink 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 mifery. Sore pierc'd by wintry winds,
How many shrink into the fordid hut
Of cheerless poverty. How many shake
With all the fiercer tortures of the mind,
Unbounded paffion, madness, guilt, remorse;
Whence tumbled headlong from the height of life,
They furnish matter for the tragic Mufe.
Even in the vale, where wifdom loves to dwell,
With friendship, peace, and contemplation join'd,
How many, rack'd with honeft paffions, droop
In deep retir'd diftrefs. How many ftand
Around the death - bed of their dearest friends,
And point the parting anguish. Thought fond Man
Of these, and all the thousand nameless ills,
That one inceffant ftruggle render life,
One scene of toil, of fuffering, and of fate,
Vice in his high career would ftand appall'd,
And heedlefs rambling Impulfe learn to think;
The confcious heart of Charity would warm,
And her wide wish Benevolence dilate;
The focial tear would rife, the focial figh;
And into clear perfection, gradual blifs,
Refining ftill, the focial paffions work.
AND here can I forget the generous * band, Who, touch'd with human woe, redreffive fearch'd 360 Into the horrors of the gloomy jail?
Unpitied, and unheard, where mifery moans;
Where fickness pines; where thirft and hunger burn,
And poor misfortune feels the lash of vice.
While in the land of liberty, the land
Whofe every street and public meeting glow
With open freedom, little tyrants rag'd;
Snatch'd the lean morfel from the ftarving mouth;
Tore from cold wintry limbs the tatter'd weed;
Even robb'd them of the laft of comforts, sleep; 370
The free-born BRITON to the dungeon chain'd,
Or, as the luft of cruelty prevail'd,
At pleasure mark'd him with inglorious stripes;
And crush'd out lives, by fecret barbarous ways,
That for their country would have toil'd, or bled. 375
O great defign! if executed well,
With patient care, and wifdom - temper'd zeal.
Ye fons of mercy! yet refume the fearch;
Drag forth the legal monsters into light,
Wrench from their hands oppreffion's iron rod,
The Jail Committee, in the Year 1729.
|