mo

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 case I wishid,

ARGUMENT OF THE FIFTH BOOK,

A frosty morning. The foddering of cattle.—The woodman and his dog.-The poultry.--Whimsical effects of frost at a waterfall.—The Empress of Rufia's palace of ice.- Amusements of monarchs,--War, one of them. -Wars, whence And whence monarchy.--The evils of it.—English and French loyalty contrasted. The Bastille, and a prisoner there.—Liberty the chief recommendation of this country. – Modern patriotism quef- . tionable, and why.—The perifhable nature of the best human institutions.-Spiritual liberty not perishable. The Flavish state of man by nature.—Deliver him, Deit, if you can.-Grace must do it. The respective merits of patriots and martyrs stated.—Their different treatment.--Happy freedom of the man whom grace makes free.-His relish of the works of God. ---Address to the Creator.

THE

TA S K.

BOOK V.

THE WINTER MORNING WALK.

'Tis morning; and the fun, with ruddy orb Ascending, fires th’ 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 Nanting ray Slides ineffectual down the snowy vale, And, tinging all with his own rosy hue, From ev'ry herb and ev'ry spiry blade Stretches a length of shadow o'er the field. Mine, spindling into longitude immense,

In spite of gravity, and fage remark .
That I myself am but a fleeting shade,
Provokes me to a smile. With eye askance
I view the muscular proportion'd limb .
Transform’d to a lean fhank. The shapeless pair,
As they design'd to mock me, at my side
Take step for step; and, as I near approach
The cottage, walk along the plaster'd wall,
Prepost'rous sight! the legs without the man.
The verdure of the plain lies buried deep
Beneath the dazzling deluge; and the bents,
And coarser grass; upspearing o’er the rest,
Of late unsightly and unseen, now shine
Conspicuous, and, in bright apparel clad
And Aedg’d with icy feathers, nod superb.
The cattle mourn in corners where the fence
Screens them, and seem half petrified to Neep
In unrecumbent sadness. There they wait
Their wonted fodder; not like hung’ring man,
Fretful if unsupplied; but filent, meek,