Plaintive and piteous, as it wept and wailed Its wasted tones and harmony unheard; 361 Fierce the dispute, whate'er the theme; while she,

Fell Discord, arbitress of such debate, Perched on the sign-post, holds with even hand

Her undecisive scales. In this she lays 365
A weight of ignorance, in that, of pride,
And smiles delighted with the eternal poise.
Dire is the frequent curse and its twin sound
The cheek-distending oath, not to be praised
As ornamental, musical, polite,
Like those which modern senators employ,
Whose oath is rhetoric, and who swear for
fame.

370

414

That to suppose a scene where she presides
Is tramontane, and stumbles all belief.
No. We are polished now. The rural lass,
Whom once her virgin modesty and grace,
Her artless manners and her neat. attire,
So dignified, that she was hardly less
Than the fair shepherdess of old romance,
Is seen no more. The character is lost. 420
Her head adorned with lappets pinned aloft
And ribbons streaming gay, superbly raised
And magnified beyond all human size,
Indebted to some smart wig-weaver's hand
For more than half the tresses it sustains;
Her elbows ruffled, and her tottering form
Ill propped upon French heels; she might be
deemed

427

By modern lights from an erroneous taste,
I cannot but lament thy splendid wit
Entangled in the cobwebs of the schools.
I still revere thee, courtly though retired,
Though stretched at ease in Chertsey's silent
bowers,

476

Not unemployed, and finding rich amends
For a lost world in solitude and verse.
'Tis born with all. The love of Nature's
works

Is an ingredient in the compound, man,
Infused at the creation of the kind.
And though the Almighty Maker has
throughout

480

Is still the livery she delights to wear, Though sickly samples of the exuberant whole.

What are the casements lined 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

511

That man, immured in cities, still retains
His inborn, inextinguishable thirst
Of rural scenes, compensating his loss
By supplemental shifts, the best he may? 515
The most unfurnished 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 520 And watered duly. There the pitcher stands A fragment, and the spoutless tea-pot there: Sad witnesses how close-pent man regrets