He cultivates. These serve him with a hint,
That Nature lives; that sight-refreshing green
Is still the liv'ry she delights to wear,

Though sickly samples of th' exub'rant whole.
What are the casements lin'd with creeping herbs,
The prouder sashes fronted with a range

Of orange, myrtle, or the fragrant weed,

The Frenchman's darling?* are they not all proofs
That man, immur'd in cities, still retains
His inborn inextinguishable thirst

Of rural scenes, compensating his loss

By supplemental shifts, the best he may P
The most unfurnish'd with the means of life,

And they, that never pass their brick-wall bounds,
To range the fields, and treat their lungs with air,
Yet feel the burning instinct over head
Suspend their crazy boxes, planted thick
And water'd duly. There the pitcher stands
A fragment, and the spoutless tea-pot there;
Sad witnesses how close-pent man regrets
The country, with what ardour he contrives
A peep at Nature, when he can no more.

Hail, therefore, patroness of health and ease,
And contemplation, heart-consoling joys,
And harmless pleasures, in the throng'd abode
Of multitudes unknown; hail, rural life;
Address himself who will to the pursuit
Of honours, or emolument, or fame!
J shall not add myself to such a chase,
Thwart his attempts, or envy his success.
Some must be great. Great offices will have
Great talents. And God gives to every man
The virtue, temper, understanding, taste,
That lifts him into life, and lets him fall
Just in the niche he was ordain'd to fill.
To the deliv'rer of an injur'd land

He gives a tongue t' enlarge upon, a heart
To feel, and courage to redress her wrongs;
To monarchs dignity; to judges sense;

To artists ingenuity and skill;

To me, an unambitious mind, content

In the low vale of life, that early felt

A wish for ease and leisure, and ere long

Found here that leisure and that ease I wish'd.

Mignionette.

THE TASK.
BOOK V.

THE WINTER MORNING WALK.

THE ARGUMENT.

A frosty morning....The foddering of cattle.The woodman and his dog. The poultry. Whimsical effects of frost at a waterfall....The empre s of Russia's palace of ice....Amusements of monarchs ---War, one of them..--Wars, whence...And whence monarchy.--The evils of it.English and French loyalty contrasted.The Bastile, and a prisoner there. ---Liberty the chief recommendation of this country. Modern patriotism questionable, and why.The perishable nature of the best human institutions. Spiritual liberty not perishable.--The slavish state of man by nature.---Deliver him, Deist, if you can. ...Grace must do it...The respective merits of patriots and mar yrs stated. Their different treatment.---Happy freedom of the man whom grace makes free.His relish of the works of God.---Address to the Creator.

"Tis morning; and the sun, with ruddy orb
Ascending, fires th' horizon; while the clouds,
That crowd away before the driving wind,
More ardent as the disk emerges more,
Resemble most some city in a blaze,

Seen through the leafless wood. His slanting ray
Slides ineffectual down the snowy vale,
And, tinging all with his own rosy hue,
From every herb and every spiry blade
Stretches a length of shadow o'er the field,
Mine, spindling into longitude immense,
In spite of gravity and sage remark
That I myself am but a fleeting shade,
Provokes me to a smile. With eye askance
I view the muscular proportioned limb

Transform'd to a lean shank. The shapeless pair,

As they design'd to mock me, at my side
Take step for step; and, as I near approach
The cottage, walk along the plaster'd wall,
Prepost'rous sight! the legs without the man.
The verdure of the plain lies buried deep
Beneath the dazzling deluge; and the bents
And coarser grass, upspearing o'er the rest,
Of late unsightly and unseen, now shine
Conspicuous, and in bright apparel clad,
And fledg'd with icy feathers, nod superb.
The cattle mourn in corners where the fence
Screens them, and seem half-petrified to sleep
In unrecumbent sadness. There they wait
Their wonted fodder; not like hung'ring man,
Fretful if unsupplied; but silent meek,

And patient of the slow-pac'd swain's delay.
He from the stack carves out th' accustom'd load,
Deep-plunging, and again deep-plunging oft,
His broad keen knife into the solid mass:
Smooth as a wall the upright remnant stands,
With such undeviating and even force
He severs it away: no needless care,
Lest storms should overset the leaning pile
Deciduous, or its own unbalanc'd weight.
Forth goes the woodman, leaving unconcern'd
The cheerful haunts of man; to wield the axe,
And drive the wedge in yonder forest drear,
From morn to eve, his solitary task.
Shaggy, and lean, and shrewd, with pointed ears,
And tail cropp'd short, half lurcher and half cur,
His dog attends him. Close behind his heel
Now creeps he slow; and now, with many a frisk
Wide-scamp'ring, snatches up the drifted snow
With iv'ry teeth, or ploughs it with his snout;
Then shakes his powder'd coat, and barks for joy.
Heedless of all his pranks, the sturdy churl
Moves right toward the mark; nor stops for ought,
But now and then with pressure of his thumb
T' adjust the fragrant charge of a short tube,
That fumes beneath his nose: the trailing cloud
Streams far behind him, scenting all the air.
Now from the roost, or from the neighb'ring pale,
Where, diligent to catch the first faint gleam
Of smiling day, they gossip'd side by side,
Come trooping at the housewife's well-known call
The feather'd tribes domestic. Half on wing,

And half on foot, they brush the fleecy flood,
Conscious and fearful of too deep a plunge.
The sparrows peep, and quit the shelt'ring eaves,
To seize the fair occasion; well they eye
The scatter'd grain, and thievishly resolved
T'escape th' impending famine, often scar'd,
As oft return, a pert voracious kind.
Clean riddance quickly made, one only care
Remains to each, the search of sunny nook
Or shed impervious to the blast. Resign'd
To sad necessity, the cock foregocs

His wonted strut; and, wading at their head
With well-consider'd steps, seems to resent
His alter'd gait and stateliness retrench'd.
How find the myriads, that in summer cheer
The hills and valleys with their ceaseless songs,
Due sustenance, or where subsist they now?

Earth yields them nought; th' imprison'd worm is safe
Beneath the frozen clod; all seeds of herbs
Lie cover'd close; and berry-bearing thorns,
That feed the thrush (whatever some suppose),
Afford the smaller minstrels no supply.

The long protracted rigour of the year

Thins all their num'rous flocks. In chinks and holes Ten thousand seek an unmolested end,

As instinct prompts; self-buried ere they die.

The very rooks and daws forsake the fields,

Where neither grub, nor root, nor earth-nut, now
Repays their labour more; and perch'd aloft
By the wayside, or stalking in the path,
Lean pensioners upon the traveller's track,

Pick up their nauseous dole, though sweet to them,
Of voided pulse or half-digested grain.
The streams are lost amid the splendid blank,
O'erwhelming all distinction. On the flood,
Indurated and fix'd, the snowy weight
Lies undissolv'd; while silently beneath
And unperceiv'd, the current steals away.
Not so where scornful of a check, it leaps
The milldam, dashes on the restless wheel,
And wantons in the pebbly gulf below;
No frost can bind it there; its utmost force
Can but arrest the light and smoky mist,
That in its fall the liquid sheet throws wide,
And see where it has hung th' embroider'd banks
With forms so various, that no powers of art,

The pencil, or the pen, may trace the scene.
Here glitt'ring turrets rise, upbeaming high
(Fantastic misarrangement!) on the roof

Large growth of what may seem the sparkling trees
And shrubs of fairy land. The crystal drops,
That trickle down the branches, fast congeal'd,
Shoot into pillars of pellucid length,

And prop the pile they but adorn'd before.
Here grotto within grotto safe defies

The sunbeam; there, emboss'd and fretted wild,
The growing wonder takes a thousand shapes
Capricious, in which fancy seeks in vain
The likeness of some object seen before.
Thus Nature works as if to mock at Art,
And in defiance of her rival powers;
By those fortuitous and random strokes
Performing such inimitable feats,

As she with all her rules can never reach.
Less worthy of applause, though more admir'd,
Because a novelty, the work of man,
Imperial mistress of the fur-clad Russ,
Thy most magnificent and mighty freak,
The wonder of the North. No forest fell,

When thou wouldst build; no quarry sent its stores
T'enrich thy walls: but thou didst hew the floods,
And make thy marble of the glassy wave.

In such a palace Aristæus found

Cyrene, when he bore the plaintive tale
Of his lost bees to her maternal ear;

In such a palace Poetry might place

The armoury of Winter where his troops,

The gloomy clouds, find weapons, arrowy sleet,
Skin-piercing volley, blossom-bruising hail,

And snow that often blinds the traveller's course,
And wraps him in an unexpected tomb.

Silently as a dream the fabric rose;

No sound of hammer or of saw was there:
Ice upon ice, the well adjusted parts

Were soon conjoin'd, nor other cement ask'd
Than water interfused to make them one.
Lamps gracefully dispos'd, and of all hues,
Illumined every side; a wat'ry light

Gleam'd through the clear transparency, that seem'd
Another moon new risen, or meteor fall'n

From Heaven to Earth, of lambent flame serene.

So stood the brittle prodigy; though smooth