Sleep seems their only refuge. For alas
Where penury is felt the thought is chain'd.
And sweet colloquial pleasures are but few.

DRAWN BY RICHARD WESTALLR.A. ENGRAVED BY J HROBINSON; PUBLISHED BY JOHN SHARPE PICCADILLY.

THE TASK.

BOOK IV.

THE WINTER EVENING.

The post comes in.-The newspaper is read.-The World contemplated at a distance.-Address to Winter.-The rural amusements of a winter evening compared with the fashionable ones.-Address to evening.— A brown study.-Fall of snow in the evening.-The waggoner.-A poor family piece. The rural thief.-Public houses.-The multitude of them censured. The farmer's daughter: what she was-what she is.-The simplicity of country manners almost lost.-Causes of the change.Desertion of the country by the rich.-Neglect of magistrates.-The militia principally in fault.-The new recruit and his transformation.Reflection on bodies corporate.-The love of rural objects natural to all, and never to be totally extinguished.

HARK! 'tis the twanging horn o'er yonder bridge,
That with its wearisome but needful length
Bestrides the wintry flood, in which the moon
Sees her unwrinkled face reflected bright;-
He comes, the herald of a noisy world,

With spatter'd boots, strapp'd waist, and frozen locks;
News from all nations lumbering at his back.

True to his charge, the close pack'd load behind,

Yet careless what he brings, his one concern
Is to conduct it to the destined inn;

And, having dropp'd the' expected bag, pass on.
He whistles as he goes, light-hearted wretch,
Cold and yet cheerful; messenger of grief
Perhaps to thousands, and of joy to some;
To him indifferent whether grief or joy.
Houses in ashes, and the fall of stocks,
Births, deaths, and marriages, epistles wet
With tears, that trickled down the writer's cheeks
Fast as the periods from his fluent quilt,

Or charged with amorous sighs of absent swains,
Or nymphs responsive, equally affect

His horse and him, unconscious of them all.
But O the' important budget! usher'd in
With such heart-shaking music, who can say
What are its tidings? have our troops awaked?
Or do they still, as if with opium drugg'd,
Snore to the murmurs of the' Atlantic wave?
Is India free? and does she wear her plumed
And jewel'd turban with a smile of peace,
Or do we grind her still? The grand debate,
The popular harangue, the tart reply,
The logic, and the wisdom, and the wit,
And the loud laugh-I long to know them all;
I burn to set the' imprison'd wranglers free,
And give them voice and utterance once again.

Now stir the fire, and close the shutters fast,
Let fall the curtains, wheel the sofa round,
And, while the bubbling and loud hissing urn.