Delphi Poetry Anthology: The World's Greatest Poems (Delphi Poets Series Book 50) (142 page)

Whom call we gay? That honour has been long
 
The boast of mere pretenders to the name.
 
The innocent are gay — the lark is gay,
 
That dries his feathers saturate with dew
 
Beneath the rosy cloud, while yet the beams
 
Of day-spring overshoot his humble nest.
 
The peasant too, a witness of his song,
 
Himself a songster, is as gay as he.
 
But save me from the gaiety of those
 
Whose headaches nail them to a noonday bed;
 
And save me, too, from theirs whose haggard eyes
 
Flash desperation, and betray their pangs
 
For property stripped off by cruel chance;
 
From gaiety that fills the bones with pain,
 
The mouth with blasphemy, the heart with woe.

The earth was made so various, that the mind
 
Of desultory man, studious of change,
 
And pleased with novelty, might be indulged.
 
Prospects however lovely may be seen
 
Till half their beauties fade; the weary sight,
 
Too well acquainted with their smiles, slides off
 
Fastidious, seeking less familiar scenes.
 
Then snug enclosures in the sheltered vale,
 
Where frequent hedges intercept the eye,
 
Delight us, happy to renounce a while,
 
Not senseless of its charms, what still we love,
 
That such short absence may endear it more.
 
Then forests, or the savage rock may please,
 
That hides the sea-mew in his hollow clefts
 
Above the reach of man: his hoary head
 
Conspicuous many a league, the mariner,
 
Bound homeward, and in hope already there,
 
Greets with three cheers exulting. At his waist
 
A girdle of half-withered shrubs he shows,
 
And at his feet the baffled billows die.
 
The common overgrown with fern, and rough
 
With prickly gorse, that, shapeless and deformed
 
And dangerous to the touch, has yet its bloom,
 
And decks itself with ornaments of gold,
 
Yields no unpleasing ramble; there the turf
 
Smells fresh, and, rich in odoriferous herbs
 
And fungous fruits of earth, regales the sense
 
With luxury of unexpected sweets.

There often wanders one, whom better days
 
Saw better clad, in cloak of satin trimmed
 
With lace, and hat with splendid ribbon bound.
 
A serving-maid was she, and fell in love
 
With one who left her, went to sea and died.
 
Her fancy followed him through foaming waves
 
To distant shores, and she would sit and weep
 
At what a sailor suffers; fancy too,
 
Delusive most where warmest wishes are,
 
Would oft anticipate his glad return,
 
And dream of transports she was not to know.
 
She heard the doleful tidings of his death,
 
And never smiled again. And now she roams
 
The dreary waste; there spends the livelong day,
 
And there, unless when charity forbids,
 
The livelong night. A tattered apron hides,
 
Worn as a cloak, and hardly hides, a gown
 
More tattered still; and both but ill conceal
 
A bosom heaved with never-ceasing sighs.
 
She begs an idle pin of all she meets,
 
And hoards them in her sleeve; but needful food,
 
Though pressed with hunger oft, or comelier clothes,
 
Though pinched with cold, asks never. — Kate is crazed!

I see a column of slow-rising smoke
 
O’ertop the lofty wood that skirts the wild.
 
A vagabond and useless tribe there eat
 
Their miserable meal. A kettle slung
 
Between two poles upon a stick transverse,
 
Receives the morsel; flesh obscene of dog,
 
Or vermin, or, at best, of cock purloined
 
From his accustomed perch. Hard-faring race!
 
They pick their fuel out of every hedge,
 
Which, kindled with dry leaves, just saves unquenched
 
The spark of life. The sportive wind blows wide
 
Their fluttering rags, and shows a tawny skin,
 
The vellum of the pedigree they claim.
 
Great skill have they in palmistry, and more
 
To conjure clean away the gold they touch,
 
Conveying worthless dross into its place;
 
Loud when they beg, dumb only when they steal.
 
Strange! that a creature rational, and cast
 
In human mould, should brutalise by choice
 
His nature, and, though capable of arts
 
By which the world might profit and himself,
 
Self-banished from society, prefer
 
Such squalid sloth to honourable toil.
 
Yet even these, though feigning sickness oft
 
They swathe the forehead, drag the limping limb,
 
And vex their flesh with artificial sores,
 
Can change their whine into a mirthful note
 
When safe occasion offers, and with dance,
 
And music of the bladder and the bag,
 
Beguile their woes, and make the woods resound.
 
Such health and gaiety of heart enjoy
 
The houseless rovers of the sylvan world;
 
And breathing wholesome air, and wandering much,
 
Need other physic none to heal the effects
 
Of loathsome diet, penury, and cold.

Blest he, though undistinguished from the crowd
 
By wealth or dignity, who dwells secure
 
Where man, by nature fierce, has laid aside
 
His fierceness, having learnt, though slow to learn
 
The manners and the arts of civil life.
 
His wants, indeed, are many; but supply
 
Is obvious; placed within the easy reach
 
Of temperate wishes and industrious hands.
 
Here virtue thrives as in her proper soil;
 
Not rude and surly, and beset with thorns,
 
And terrible to sight, as when she springs
 
(If e’er she spring spontaneous) in remote
 
And barbarous climes, where violence prevails,
 
And strength is lord of all; but gentle, kind,
 
By culture tamed, by liberty refreshed,
 
And all her fruits by radiant truth matured.
 
War and the chase engross the savage whole;
 
War followed for revenge, or to supplant
 
The envied tenants of some happier spot;
 
The chase for sustenance, precarious trust!
 
His hard condition with severe constraint
 
Binds all his faculties, forbids all growth
 
Of wisdom, proves a school in which he learns
 
Sly circumvention, unrelenting hate,
 
Mean self-attachment, and scarce aught beside.
 
Thus fare the shivering natives of the north,
 
And thus the rangers of the western world,
 
Where it advances far into the deep,
 
Towards the Antarctic. Even the favoured isles
 
So lately found, although the constant sun
 
Cheer all their seasons with a grateful smile,
 
Can boast but little virtue; and inert
 
Through plenty, lose in morals what they gain
 
In manners, victims of luxurious ease.
 
These therefore I can pity, placed remote
 
From all that science traces, art invents,
 
Or inspiration teaches; and enclosed
 
In boundless oceans, never to be passed
 
By navigators uninformed as they,
 
Or ploughed perhaps by British bark again.
 
But far beyond the rest, and with most cause,
 
Thee, gentle savage! whom no love of thee
 
Or thine, but curiosity perhaps,
 
Or else vain-glory, prompted us to draw
 
Forth from thy native bowers, to show thee here
 
With what superior skill we can abuse
 
The gifts of Providence, and squander life.
 
The dream is past. And thou hast found again
 
Thy cocoas and bananas, palms, and yams,
 
And homestall thatched with leaves. But hast thou found
 
Their former charms? And, having seen our state,
 
Our palaces, our ladies, and our pomp
 
Of equipage, our gardens, and our sports,
 
And heard our music; are thy simple friends,
 
Thy simple fare, and all thy plain delights
 
As dear to thee as once? And have thy joys
 
Lost nothing by comparison with ours?
 
Rude as thou art (for we returned thee rude
 
And ignorant, except of outward show),
 
I cannot think thee yet so dull of heart
 
And spiritless, as never to regret
 
Sweets tasted here, and left as soon as known.
 
Methinks I see thee straying on the beach,
 
And asking of the surge that bathes the foot
 
If ever it has washed our distant shore.
 
I see thee weep, and thine are honest tears,
 
A patriot’s for his country. Thou art sad
 
At thought of her forlorn and abject state,
 
From which no power of thine can raise her up.
 
Thus fancy paints thee, and, though apt to err,
 
Perhaps errs little when she paints thee thus.
 
She tells me too that duly every morn
 
Thou climb’st the mountain-top, with eager eye
 
Exploring far and wide the watery waste,
 
For sight of ship from England. Every speck
 
Seen in the dim horizon turns thee pale
 
With conflict of contending hopes and fears.
 
But comes at last the dull and dusky eve,
 
And sends thee to thy cabin, well prepared
 
To dream all night of what the day denied.
 
Alas, expect it not. We found no bait
 
To tempt us in thy country. Doing good,
 
Disinterested good, is not our trade.
 
We travel far, ’tis true, but not for naught;
 
And must be bribed to compass earth again
 
By other hopes, and richer fruits than yours.

But though true worth and virtue, in the mild
 
And genial soil of cultivated life
 
Thrive most, and may perhaps thrive only there,
 
Yet not in cities oft. In proud and gay
 
And gain-devoted cities, thither flow,
 
As to a common and most noisome sewer,
 
The dregs and feculence of every land.
 
In cities, foul example on most minds
 
Begets its likeness. Rank abundance breeds
 
In gross and pampered cities sloth and lust,
 
And wantonness and gluttonous excess.
 
In cities, vice is hidden with most ease,
 
Or seen with least reproach; and virtue, taught
 
By frequent lapse, can hope no triumph there,
 
Beyond the achievement of successful flight.
 
I do confess them nurseries of the arts,
 
In which they flourish most; where, in the beams
 
Of warm encouragement, and in the eye
 
Of public note, they reach their perfect size.
 
Such London is, by taste and wealth proclaimed
 
The fairest capital in all the world,
 
By riot and incontinence the worst.
 
There, touched by Reynolds, a dull blank becomes
 
A lucid mirror, in which nature sees
 
All her reflected features. Bacon there
 
Gives more than female beauty to a stone,
 
And Chatham’s eloquence to marble lips.
 
Nor does the chisel occupy alone
 
The powers of sculpture, but the style as much;
 
Each province of her art her equal care.
 
With nice incision of her guided steel
 
She ploughs a brazen field, and clothes a soil
 
So sterile with what charms soe’er she will,
 
The richest scenery and the loveliest forms.
 
Where finds philosophy her eagle eye,
 
With which she gazes at yon burning disk
 
Undazzled, and detects and counts his spots?
 
In London. Where her implements exact,
 
With which she calculates, computes, and scans
 
All distance, motion, magnitude, and now
 
Measures an atom, and now girds a world?
 
In London. Where has commerce such a mart,
 
So rich, so thronged, so drained, and so supplied,
 
As London, opulent, enlarged, and still
 
Increasing London? Babylon of old
 
Not more the glory of the earth, than she
 
A more accomplished world’s chief glory now.