And fit the limpid element for use, Else noxious: oceans, rivers, lakes, and streams, All feel the fresh'ning impulse, and are cleans'd By restless undulation: ev'n the oak Thrives by the rude concussion of the storm: He seems indeed indignant, and to feel Th' impression of the blast with proud disdain, He held the thunder: but the monarch owes More fixt below, the more disturb'd above. No mean advantage from a kindred cause, From strenuous toil his hours of sweetest ease. The sedentary stretch their lazy length When custom bids, but no refreshment find, For none they need: the languid eye, the cheek Deserted of its bloom, the flaccid, shrunk, And wither'd muscle, and the vapid soul, Reproach their owner with that love of rest Good temper; spirits prompt to undertake, Sprightly, and old almost without decay. grave Like a coy maiden, ease, when courted most, Farthest retires-an idol, at whose shrine Who oft'nest sacrifice are favour'd least. The love of Nature, and the scene she draws, Is Nature's dictate. Strange! there should be found, Who, self-imprison'd in their proud saloons, For the unscented fictions of the loom; The inferior wonders of an artist's hand! And throws Italian light on English walls: But imitative strokes can do no more Than please the eye-sweet Nature ev'ry sense. The air salubrious of her lofty hills, The cheering fragrance of her dewy vales, And music of her woods-no works of man May rival these; these all bespeak a pow'r Peculiar, and exclusively her own. Beneath the open sky she spreads the feast; His cheek recovers soon its healthful hue; His eye relumines its extinguish'd fires; He walks, he leaps, he runs-is wing'd with joy, And riots in the sweets of ev'ry breeze. He does not scorn it, who has long endur'd A fever's agonies, and fed on drugs. Nor yet the mariner, his blood inflam'd With visions prompted by intense desire: Fair fields appear below, such as he left, The spleen is seldom felt where Flora reigns; The low'ring eye, the petulance, the frown, And sullen sadness, that o'ershade, distort, And mar the face of beauty, when no cause For such immeasurable woe appears, These Flora banishes, and gives the fair Sweet smiles, and bloom less transient than her own. It is the constant revolution, stale And tasteless, of the same repeated joys, That palls and satiates, and makes languid life |