The Task, and Other Poems Part 7

The town has tinged the country; and the stain Appears a spot upon a vestal's robe, The worse for what it soils. The fas.h.i.+on runs Down into scenes still rural, but alas, Scenes rarely graced with rural manners now.

Time was when in the pastoral retreat The unguarded door was safe; men did not watch To invade another's right, or guard their own.

Then sleep was undisturbed by fear, unscared By drunken howlings; and the chilling tale Of midnight murder was a wonder heard With doubtful credit, told to frighten babes But farewell now to unsuspicious nights, And slumbers unalarmed. Now, ere you sleep, See that your polished arms be primed with care, And drop the night-bolt. Ruffians are abroad, And the first larum of the c.o.c.k's shrill throat May prove a trumpet, summoning your ear To horrid sounds of hostile feet within.

Even daylight has its dangers; and the walk Through pathless wastes and woods, unconscious once Of other tenants than melodious birds, Or harmless flocks, is hazardous and bold.

Lamented change! to which full many a cause Inveterate, hopeless of a cure, conspires.

The course of human things from good to ill, From ill to worse, is fatal, never fails.

Increase of power begets increase of wealth; Wealth luxury, and luxury excess; Excess, the scrofulous and itchy plague That seizes first the opulent, descends To the next rank contagious, and in time Taints downward all the graduated scale Of order, from the chariot to the plough.

The rich, and they that have an arm to check The licence of the lowest in degree, Desert their office; and themselves, intent On pleasure, haunt the capital, and thus To all the violence of lawless hands Resign the scenes their presence might protect.

Authority itself not seldom sleeps, Though resident, and witness of the wrong.

The plump convivial parson often bears The magisterial sword in vain, and lays His reverence and his wors.h.i.+p both to rest On the same cus.h.i.+on of habitual sloth.

Perhaps timidity restrains his arm, When he should strike he trembles, and sets free, Himself enslaved by terror of the band, The audacious convict whom he dares not bind.

Perhaps, though by profession ghostly pure, He, too, may have his vice, and sometimes prove Less dainty than becomes his grave outside In lucrative concerns. Examine well His milk-white hand. The palm is hardly clean-- But here and there an ugly s.m.u.tch appears.

Foh! 'twas a bribe that left it. He has touched Corruption. Whoso seeks an audit here Propitious, pays his tribute, game or fish, Wildfowl or venison, and his errand speeds.

But faster far and more than all the rest A n.o.ble cause, which none who bears a spark Of public virtue ever wished removed, Works the deplored and mischievous effect.

'Tis universal soldiers.h.i.+p has stabbed The heart of merit in the meaner cla.s.s.

Arms, through the vanity and brainless rage Of those that bear them, in whatever cause, Seem most at variance with all moral good, And incompatible with serious thought.

The clown, the child of nature, without guile, Blest with an infant's ignorance of all But his own simple pleasures, now and then A wrestling match, a foot-race, or a fair, Is balloted, and trembles at the news.

Sheepish he doffs his hat, and mumbling swears A Bible-oath to be whate'er they please, To do he knows not what. The task performed, That instant he becomes the serjeant's care, His pupil, and his torment, and his jest; His awkward gait, his introverted toes, Bent knees, round shoulders, and dejected looks, Procure him many a curse. By slow degrees, Unapt to learn and formed of stubborn stuff, He yet by slow degrees puts off himself, Grows conscious of a change, and likes it well.

He stands erect, his slouch becomes a walk, He steps right onward, martial in his air, His form and movement; is as smart above As meal and larded locks can make him: wears His hat or his plumed helmet with a grace, And, his three years of heros.h.i.+p expired, Returns indignant to the slighted plough.

He hates the field in which no fife or drum Attends him, drives his cattle to a march, And sighs for the smart comrades he has left.

'Twere well if his exterior change were all-- But with his clumsy port the wretch has lost His ignorance and harmless manners too.

To swear, to game, to drink, to show at home By lewdness, idleness, and Sabbath-breach, The great proficiency he made abroad, To astonish and to grieve his gazing friends, To break some maiden's and his mother's heart, To be a pest where he was useful once, Are his sole aim, and all his glory now!

Man in society is like a flower Blown in its native bed. 'Tis there alone His faculties expanded in full bloom s.h.i.+ne out, there only reach their proper use.

But man a.s.sociated and leagued with man By regal warrant, or self-joined by bond For interest sake, or swarming into clans Beneath one head for purposes of war, Like flowers selected from the rest, and bound And bundled close to fill some crowded vase, Fades rapidly, and by compression marred Contracts defilement not to be endured.

Hence chartered boroughs are such public plagues, And burghers, men immaculate perhaps In all their private functions, once combined, Become a loathsome body, only fit For dissolution, hurtful to the main.

Hence merchants, unimpeachable of sin Against the charities of domestic life, Incorporated, seem at once to lose Their nature, and, disclaiming all regard For mercy and the common rights of man, Build factories with blood, conducting trade At the sword's point, and dyeing the white robe Of innocent commercial justice red.

Hence too the field of glory, as the world Misdeems it, dazzled by its bright array, With all the majesty of thundering pomp, Enchanting music and immortal wreaths, Is but a school where thoughtlessness is taught On principle, where foppery atones For folly, gallantry for every vice.

But slighted as it is, and by the great Abandoned, and, which still I more regret, Infected with the manners and the modes It knew not once, the country wins me still.

I never framed a wish or formed a plan That flattered me with hopes of earthly bliss, But there I laid the scene. There early strayed My fancy, ere yet liberty of choice Had found me, or the hope of being free.

My very dreams were rural, rural too The first-born efforts of my youthful muse, Sportive, and jingling her poetic bells Ere yet her ear was mistress of their powers.

No bard could please me but whose lyre was tuned To Nature's praises. Heroes and their feats Fatigued me, never weary of the pipe Of t.i.tyrus, a.s.sembling as he sang The rustic throng beneath his favourite beech.

Then Milton had indeed a poet's charms: New to my taste, his Paradise surpa.s.sed The struggling efforts of my boyish tongue To speak its excellence; I danced for joy.

I marvelled much that, at so ripe an age As twice seven years, his beauties had then first Engaged my wonder, and admiring still, And still admiring, with regret supposed The joy half lost because not sooner found.

Thee, too, enamoured of the life I loved, Pathetic in its praise, in its pursuit Determined, and possessing it at last With transports such as favoured lovers feel, I studied, prized, and wished that I had known, Ingenious Cowley: and though now, reclaimed 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, 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 Discriminated each from each, by strokes And touches of His hand, with so much art Diversified, that two were never found Twins at all points--yet this obtains in all, That all discern a beauty in His works, And all can taste them: minds that have been formed And tutored, with a relish more exact, But none without some relish, none unmoved.

It is a flame that dies not even there, Where nothing feeds it. Neither business, crowds, Nor habits of luxurious city life, Whatever else they smother of true worth In human bosoms, quench it or abate.

The villas, with which London stands begirt Like a swarth Indian with his belt of beads, Prove it. A breath of unadulterate air, The glimpse of a green pasture, how they cheer The citizen, and brace his languid frame!

Even in the stifling bosom of the town, A garden in which nothing thrives, has charms That soothe the rich possessor; much consoled That here and there some sprigs of mournful mint, Of nightshade, or valerian, grace the well He cultivates. These serve him with a hint That Nature lives; that sight-refres.h.i.+ng green Is still the livery she delights to wear, Though sickly samples of the exuberant whole.

What are the cas.e.m.e.nts 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 That man, immured in cities, still retains His inborn inextinguishable thirst Of rural scenes, compensating his loss By supplemental s.h.i.+fts, the best he may?

The most unfurnished with the means of life, And they that never pa.s.s 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 watered 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 thronged abode Of mult.i.tudes unknown, hail rural life!

Address himself who will to the pursuit Of honours, or emolument, or fame, I 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 G.o.d gives to every man The virtue, temper, understanding, taste, That lifts him into life, and lets him fall Just in the niche he was ordained to fill.

To the deliverer of an injured land He gives a tongue to 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 wished.

BOOK V.

THE WINTER MORNING WALK.

'Tis morning; and the sun, with ruddy orb Ascending, fires the 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, tingeing 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 Transformed to a lean shank; the shapeless pair, As they designed to mock me, at my side Take step for step, and, as I near approach The cottage, walk along the plastered wall, Preposterous sight, the legs without the man.

The verdure of the plain lies buried deep Beneath the dazzling deluge, and the bents And coa.r.s.er gra.s.s upspearing o'er the rest, Of late unsightly and unseen, now s.h.i.+ne Conspicuous, and, in bright apparel clad, And fledged with icy feathers, nod superb.

The cattle mourn in corners, where the fence Screens them, and seem, half petrified, to sleep In unrec.u.mbent sadness. There they wait Their wonted fodder, not, like hungering man, Fretful if unsupplied, but silent, meek, And patient of the slow-paced swain's delay.

He from the stack carves out the accustomed load, Deep-plunging, and again deep-plunging oft His broad keen knife into the solid ma.s.s: 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 unbalanced weight.

Forth goes the woodman, leaving unconcerned The cheerful haunts of man, to wield the axe And drive the wedge in yonder forest drear, From morn to eve his solitary task.

s.h.a.ggy and lean and shrewd, with pointed ears And tail cropped 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-scampering, s.n.a.t.c.hes up the drifted snow With ivory teeth, or ploughs it with his snout; Then shakes his powdered coat and barks for joy.

Heedless of all his pranks the st.u.r.dy churl Moves right toward the mark; nor stops for aught, But now and then, with pressure of his thumb, To 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 neighbouring pale, Where, diligent to catch the first faint gleam Of smiling day, they gossiped side by side, Come trooping at the housewife's well-known call The feathered 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 sheltering eaves To seize the fair occasion; well they eye The scattered grain, and, thievishly resolved To escape the impending famine, often scared 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. Resigned To sad necessity the c.o.c.k foregoes His wonted strut, and, wading at their head With well-considered steps, seems to resent His altered gait, and stateliness retrenched.

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 naught: the imprisoned worm is safe Beneath the frozen clod; all seeds of herbs Lie covered close, and berry-bearing thorns That feed the thrush (whatever some suppose), Afford the smaller minstrel no supply.

The long-protracted rigour of the year Thins all their numerous flocks. In c.h.i.n.ks 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 perched aloft By the way-side, 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 fixed the snowy weight Lies undissolved, while silently beneath And unperceived the current steals away; Not so where, scornful of a check, it leaps The mill-dam, 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 the embroidered banks With forms so various, that no powers of art, The pencil, or the pen, may trace the scene!

Here glittering turrets rise, upbearing 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 congealed, Shoot into pillars of pellucid length And prop the pile they but adorned before.

Here grotto within grotto safe defies The sunbeam. There imbossed 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 these fortuitous and random strokes Performing such inimitable feats, As she with all her rules can never reach.

Less worthy of applause though more admired, 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 To enrich thy walls; but thou didst hew the floods, And make thy marble of the gla.s.sy wave.

In such a palace Aristaeus 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 conjoined, nor other cement asked Than water interfused to make them one.

Lamps gracefully disposed, and of all hues, Illumined every side. A watery light Gleamed through the clear transparency, that seemed Another moon new-risen, or meteor fallen From heaven to earth, of lambent flame serene.

So stood the brittle prodigy, though smooth And slippery the materials, yet frost-bound Firm as a rock. Nor wanted aught within That royal residence might well befit, For grandeur or for use. Long wavy wreaths Of flowers, that feared no enemy but warmth, Blushed on the panels. Mirror needed none Where all was vitreous, but in order due Convivial table and commodious seat (What seemed at least commodious seat) were there, Sofa and couch and high-built throne august.

The same lubricity was found in all, And all was moist to the warm touch; a scene Of evanescent glory, once a stream, And soon to slide into a stream again.

Alas, 'twas but a mortifying stroke Of undesigned severity, that glanced (Made by a monarch) on her own estate, On human grandeur and the courts of kings 'Twas transient in its nature, as in show 'Twas durable; as worthless, as it seemed Intrinsically precious; to the foot Treacherous and false; it smiled, and it was cold.

Great princes have great playthings. Some have played At hewing mountains into men, and some At building human wonders mountain high.

Some have amused the dull sad years of life (Life spent in indolence, and therefore sad) With schemes of monumental fame, and sought By pyramids and mausoleum pomp, Short-lived themselves, to immortalise their bones.

Some seek diversion in the tented field, And make the sorrows of mankind their sport.

But war's a game which, were their subjects wise, Kings should not play at. Nations would do well To extort their truncheons from the puny hands Of heroes whose infirm and baby minds Are gratified with mischief, and who spoil, Because men suffer it, their toy the world.

When Babel was confounded, and the great Confederacy of projectors wild and vain Was split into diversity of tongues, Then, as a shepherd separates his flock, These to the upland, to the valley those, G.o.d drave asunder and a.s.signed their lot To all the nations. Ample was the boon He gave them, in its distribution fair And equal, and he bade them dwell in peace.

Peace was a while their care. They ploughed and sowed, And reaped their plenty without grudge or strife, But violence can never longer sleep Than human pa.s.sions please. In every heart Are sown the sparks that kindle fiery war, Occasion needs but fan them, and they blaze.

Cain had already shed a brother's blood: The Deluge washed it out; but left unquenched The seeds of murder in the breast of man.

Soon, by a righteous judgment, in the line Of his descending progeny was found The first artificer of death; the shrewd Contriver who first sweated at the forge, And forced the blunt and yet unblooded steel To a keen edge, and made it bright for war.

Him Tubal named, the Vulcan of old times, The sword and falchion their inventor claim, And the first smith was the first murderer's son.

His art survived the waters; and ere long, When man was multiplied and spread abroad In tribes and clans, and had begun to call These meadows and that range of hills his own, The tasted sweets of property begat Desire of more; and industry in some To improve and cultivate their just demesne, Made others covet what they saw so fair.

Thus wars began on earth. These fought for spoil, And those in self-defence. Savage at first The onset, and irregular. At length One eminent above the rest, for strength, For stratagem, or courage, or for all, Was chosen leader. Him they served in war, And him in peace for sake of warlike deeds Reverenced no less. Who could with him compare?

Or who so worthy to control themselves As he, whose prowess had subdued their foes?