But when those charms are past, (for charms are

frail)

When time advances, and when lovers fail,

She then shines forth, solicitous to bless,

In all the glaring impotence of dress :
Thus fares the land by luxury betray'd;
In nature's simplest charms at first array'd;
But, verging to decline, its splendours rise,
Its vistas strike, its palaces surprise ;

While, scourg'd by famine, from the smiling

land,

The mournful peasant leads his humble band; And while he sinks, without one arm to save, The country blooms-a garden and a grave!

Where then, ah where, shall poverty reside, To 'scape the pressure of contiguous pride ? If, to some common's fenceless limits stray'd, He drives his flock to pick the scanty blade,

Those fenceless fields the sons of wealth divide,

And e'en the bare-worn common is denied.

If to the city sped-what waits him there?
To see profusion that he must not share ;

To see ten thousand baneful arts combin'd
To pamper luxury, and thin mankind;

To see each joy the sons of pleasure know
Extorted from his fellow creature's woe.
Here, while the courtier glitters in brocade,
There the pale artist plies the sickly trade;

Here, while the proud their long-drawn pomps

display,

There the black gibbet glooms beside the way.

The dome where pleasure holds her midnight reign,

Here, richly deck'd, admits the gorgeous train; Tumultuous grandeur crowds the blazing square, The rattling chariots clash, the torches glare.

Sure, scenes like these no troubles e'er annoy! Sure, these denote one universal joy!

Are these thy serious thoughts? Ah, turn thine

eyes

Where the poor houseless shiv'ring female lies.
She, once, perhaps in village plenty blest,
Has wept at tales of innocence distrest;
Her modest looks the cottage-might adorn,
Sweet as the primrose peeps beneath the thorn :
Now lost to all; her friends, her virtue fled,

Near her betrayer's door she lays her head;

And piuch'd with cold, and shrinking from the

show'r,

With heavy heart deplores that luckless hour,

When, idly first, ambitious of the town,

She left her wheel, and robes of country brown,

Do thine, sweet Auburn, thine, the loveliest train, Do thy fair tribes participate her pain?

E'n now, perhaps, by cold and hunger led,

At proud men's doors they ask a little bread!

Ah no to distant climes, a dreary scene,

Where half the convex world intrudes between,

To torrid tracts with fainting steps they go,

Where wild Altama murmurs to their woe.

Far diff'rent there from all that charm'd before,

The various terrors of that horrid shore;

Those blazing suns that dart a downward ray,

And fiercely shed intolerable day;

Those matted woods where birds forget to

sing,

But silent bats in drowsy cluster's cling;

Those pois'nous fields with rank luxuriance

crown'd,

Where the dark scorpion gathers death around

Where, at each step, the stranger fears to wake

The rattling terrors of the 'vengeful snake;

;

Where crouching tigers wait their hapless prey;
And savage men, more murd'rous still than they!
While oft in whirls the mad tornado flies,
Mingling the ravag'd landscape with the skies.
Far different these from every former scene,
The cooling brook, the grassy vested greep,
The breezy covert of the warbling grove,
That only shelter'd thefts of harmless love.

Good Heav'n! what sorrows gloom'd that

parting day,

That call'd them from their native walks away; When the poor exiles, ev'ry pleasure past,

Hung round the bow'rs, and fondly look'd their

last,

And took a long farewell, and wish'd in vain

For seats like these beyond the western main ;
And shudd'ring still to face the distant deep,

Return'd and wept, and still return'd to weep.

B