So he may wrap himself in honest rags
At his last gasp; but could not for a world
Fish up his dirty and dependent bread
From pools and ditches of the commonwealth,
Sordid and fickening at his own fuccefs.
Ambition, avarice, penury incurr'd
By endless riot, vanity, the luft
Of pleasure and variety, despatch,
As duly as the swallows difappear,
The world of wandering knights and fquires to
London ingulfs them all! The shark is there, And the shark's prey; the spendthrift, and the leech
That fucks him; there the fycophant, and he
That with bareheaded and obfequious bows,
Begs a warm office, doom'd to a cold jail
And groat per diem, if his patron frown.
The levee fwarms, as if in golden pomp
Were character'd on every statesman's door,
"Batter'd and bankrupt fortunes mended here."
These are the charms that fully and eclipse
The charms of nature. "Tis the cruel gripe
That lean hard-handed Poverty inflicts,
The hope of better things, the chance to win,
The wish to shine, the thirst to be amused,
That at the found of Winter's hoary wing
Unpeople all our counties of fuch herds
Of fluttering, loitering, cringing, begging, loose,
And wanton vagrants, as make London, vast
And boundless as it is, a crowded coop.
O thou, refort and mart of all the earth,
Chequer'd with all complexions of mankind,
And spotted with all crimes; in whom I fee
Much that I love, and more that I admire,
And all that I abhor; thou freckled fair,
That pleaseft and yet fhock'ft me, I can laugh,
And I can weep, can hope, and can despond,
Feel wrath and pity, when I think on thee!
Ten righteous would have faved a city once,
And thou haft many righteous.-Well for thee-
That falt preferves thee; more corrupted elfe,
And therefore more obnoxious, at this hour,
Than Sodom in her day had power to be,
For whom God heard his Abraham plead in vain.
BOOK IV. THE WINTER EVENING.
The poft comes in. The newspaper is read. The world contemplated at a distance. Address to Winter. The amusements of a rural winter evening compared with the fashionable ones. Addrefs to Evening. A brown ftudy. Fall of fnow in the evening. The waggoner. A poor family-piece. The rural thief. Public houfes. The multitude of them cenfured. The farmer's daughter: what She was-what he is. The fimplicity of country manners almost loft. Caufes of the change. Defertion of the country by the rich. Neglect of magiftrates. The militia principally in fault. The new recruit and his transformation. Reflection on bodies corporate. The love of rural objects natural to all, and never to be totally extinguished.
BOOK IV. THE WINTER EVENING.
ARK! 'tis the twanging horn o'er yonder bridge,
That with its wearifome but needful
Bestrides the wintry flood, in which the moon
Sees her unwrinkled face reflected bright;—
He comes, the herald of a noify world,
With spatter'd boots, ftrapp'd waift, and frozen
locks;
News from all nations lumbering at his back.
True to his charge, the close-pack'd load behind,
Yet careless what he brings, his one concern
Is to conduct it to the destined inn;
And, having dropp'd the expected bag, pass on.
He whistles as he goes, light-hearted wretch,
Cold and yet cheerful: meffenger of grief
Perhaps to thousands, and of joy to fome;
To him indifferent whether grief or joy.
Houses in ashes, and the fall of stocks,
Births, deaths, and marriages, epiftles wet
With tears, that trickled down the writer's cheeks
Fast as the periods from his fluent quill,
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