Where wealth and freedom reign, contentment fails; And honour sinks where commerce long prevails. Hence every state to one lov'd blessing prone, Conforms and models life to that alone. Each to the fav'rite happiness attends, And spurns the plan that aims at other ends; This fav'rite good begets peculiar pain. But let us try these truths with closer eyes, And trace them through the prospect as it lies: Like yon neglected shrub, at random cast, Its uplands sloping deck the mountain's side, While oft some temple's mould'ring tops between With memorable grandeur mark the scene. Could Nature's bounty satisfy the breast, The sons of Italy were surely blest. Whatever fruits in different climes are found, That proudly rise, or humbly court the ground; Whose bright succession decks the vary'd year; But small the bliss that sense alone bestows.... And sensual bliss is all the nation knows. In florid beauty groves and fields appear.... All evils here contaminate the mind, That opulence departed leaves behind; For wealth was theirs, not far remov'd the date, When commerce proudly flourish'd through the state; At her command the palace learnt to rise, Again the long-fall'n column sought the skies; Commerce on other shores display'd her sail; Yet still the loss of wealth is here supply'd By arts, the splendid wrecks of former pride; Here may be seen, in bloodless pomp array'd, The pasteboard triumph and the cavalcade: Processions form'd for piety and love; A mistress, or a saint, in every grove. By sports like these are all their cares beguil'd.... Each nobler aim, represt by long controul, While low delights succeeding fast behind, As in those domes, where Cæsars once bore sway, There in the ruin, heedless of the dead, The shelter-seeking peasant builds his shed; And, wond'ring man could want the larger pile, My soul, turn from them; turn we to survey Where rougher climes a nobler race display, Where the bleak Swiss their stormy mansion tread, And force a churlish soil for scanty bread; No product here the barren hills afford, But man and steel, the soldier and his sword. G No vernal blooms their torpid rocks array, But winter lingering chills the lap of May; Yet still, e'en here, content can spread a charm, Redress the clime, and all its rage disarm. Tho' poor the peasant's hut, his feasts tho' small, He sees his little lot the lot of all; Sees no contiguous palace rear its head, To shame the meanness of his humble shed; No costly lord the sumptuous banquet deal, To make him loath his vegetable meal; Each wish contracting, fits him to the soil. With patient angle trolls the finny deep, Or drives his vent'rous ploughshare to the steep; Or seeks the den where snow-tracks mark the way, And drags the struggling savage into day. |