Faint from the west emits his evening ray,
Earth's universal face, deep hid, and chill,
Is one wild dazzling waste, that buries wide
The works of man. Drooping, the labourer-ox-
Stanis cover'd o'er with snow, and then demands
The fruit of all his toil. The fowls of heaven,
Tam'd by the cruel season, crowd around
The winnowing store, and claim the little boon
Which Providence assigns them. One alone,
The dreast, sacred to the household gods,
Wisely regardful of th' embroiling sky,
In joyless fields and thorny thickets leaves
His shivering mates, and pays to trusted man
Hi annual visit. Half-afraid, he first
Against the window beats; then, brisk, alights
On the warm hearth; then, hopping o'er the floor,
Eyes all the smiling family askance,

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And pecks, and starts, and wonders where he is
Till more familiar grown, the table crumbs ---
Attract his slender feet. The foodless wilds
Pour forth their brown inhabitants. The hare,
Though timorous of heart, and hard beset
By death in various forms, dark snares, and dogs,
And more unpitying men, the garden seeks,
Urg'd on by fearless want. The bleating kind
Eye the bleak heaven, and next the glistening earth,
With looks of dumb despair; then sad dispers'd,
Dig for the wither'd herb through heaps of snow.
Now, shepherds, to your helpless charge be kind
Baffle the raging year, and fill their pens
With food at will; lodge them below the storm,
And watch them strict: for from the bellowing east,
In this dire season, oft the whirlwind's wing
Sweeps up the burden of whole wintry plains-
one wide waft; and o'er the hapless flocks,
Fra in the hollow of two neighbouring hills,

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The billowy tempest whelms; till, upward urged,
The valley to a shining mountain swells,
Tipt with a wreath high-curling in the sky..
As thus the snows arise; and foul, and fierce;
All Winter drives along the darknen'd air;

his own loose-revolving fields, the swain
Disaster'd stands; sees other hills ascend,
Of unknown joyless brow; and other scenes,
Of horrid prospect, shag the trackless plain :
Nor finds the river, nor the forest hid
Beneath the formless wild; but wanders on
From hill to dale, still more and more astray;
Impatient flouncing through the drifted heaps,
Stung with the thoughts of home; the thoughts of home
Rush on his nerves, and call their vigour forth
In many a vain attempt. How sinks his soul!
Wha black despair, what horror fills his heart!
When-for the dusky spot, which
His tufted cottage rising through the snow,
He meets the roughness of the middle waste,
Far from the track, and bless'd abode of man;
While round him night resistless closes fast,
And every tempest, howling o'er his head,
Renders the savage wilderness more wild.
Then throng the busy shapes into his mind,
Of cover'd pits, unfathomably deep,
Adire descent! beyond the power of frost;
Of faithless bogs; of precipices huge,"

fancy feign'd-290

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Smooth'd up with snow; and, what is land, unknown,

What water, of the still unfrozen spring,

In the loose marsh or solitary lake,

here the fresh fountain from the bottom boils. These check his fearful steps; and down he sinks Beneath the shelter of the shapeless drift,

Thinking o'er all the bitterness of death;
Mix'd with the tender anguish Nature shoots

Through the wruug bosom of the dying man,

Anwain for him th' officious wife prepares
The fire fair-blazing, and the vestment warm;
In vain his little children, peeping out
Into the mingling storm, demand their sire,

With tears of artless innocence. Alas!
Alas!
Norwife, nor children, more shall he behold.!.
Nor friends, nor sacred home. On every nerve
The deadly Winter seizes; shuts up sense;
And, o'er his inmost vitals creeping cold,

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ays him along the snow, a stiffen'd corse ;-
tretch'd out, and bleaching in the northern blast.
Ah little think the gay licentious proud,
Whom pleasure, power, and affluence surround;
They, who their thoughtless hours in giddy mirth,
And wanton, often cruel, riot waste;
Ah! little think they, while they dance along,
How many feel, this very moment, death,
And all the sad variety of pain.

32$

How many sink in the devouring flood,
Or more devouring flame. How many bleed,
By shameful variance betwixt man and man.
How many pine in want, and dungeon glooms;
Shut from the common air, and common use
Of their own limbs. How many drink the cup,
Of baleful grief, or eat the bitter bread
Of misery. Sore pierc'd by wintry winds,
How many shrink into the sordid hut
Of cheerless poverty. How many shake
With all the fiercer tortures of the mind,
Unbounded passion, madness, guilt, remorse;
Whence tumbled headlong from the height of life,
They furnish matter for the tragic Muse.

E'en in the vale where Wisdom loves to dwell,
With friendship, peace, and contemplation join'd,

How many, rack'd with honest passions, droop
In deep, retir'd distress. How many stand
Around the death-bed of their dearest friends,
And point the parting anguish. Thought fond Man
Of these, and all the thousand nameless ills
That one incessant struggle render life
One scene of toil, of suffering, and of fate;
Vice in his high career would stand appall'd,
And heedless rambling impulse learn to think;
The conscious heart of Charity would warm,
And her wide wish Benevolence dilate; ~
The social tear would rise, the social sigh;
And into clear perfection, gradual bliss,
Refining still, the social passions work.
And here can I forget the generous band,*
Who, touch'd with human wo, redressive search'd-
Into the horrors of the gloomy jail?

Unpitied, and unheard, where misery moans;
Where sickness pines; where thirst and hunger burn,
And poor misfortune feels the lash of vice.

While in the land of Liberty, the land

Whose every street and public meeting glow-
With open freedom, little tyrants rag'd;

Snatch'd the lean morsel from the starving mouth;
Tore from cold wintry limbs the tatter'd weed;
E'en robb'd them of the last of comforts, sleep ;-
The free-born Briton to the dungeon chain'd,
Or, as the lust of cruelty prevail'd,

At pleasure mark'd him with inglorious stripes;
And crush'd out lives, by secret barbarous ways,
That for their country would have toil'd, or bled.-
O great design! if executed well,

With patient care, and wisdom-temper'd zeal,
Ye sons of Mercy! yet resume the search;

*The Jail Committee, in the year 1729.

WINTER.

Drag forth the legal monsters into light,
Wrench from their hands Oppression's iron
And bid the cruel feel the pains they give.

rod

Much still untouch'd remains; in this rankage,
Much is the patriot's weeding hand requir'd.
The toils of law, (what dark insidious men
Have cumbrous added to perplex the truth,
And lengthen simple justice into trade,)
How glorious were the day that saw these broke,
And every man within the reach of right!

By wintry famine rous'd, from all the tract
Of horrid mountains which the shining Alps,:
And wavy Appenine, and Pyrenees,
Branch out stupendous into distant lands;
Cruel as deah, and hungry as the grave!
Burning for blood! bony, and gaunt, and grim!
Assembling wolves in raging troops descend;
And, pouring o'er the country, bear along,
Keen as the north wind sweeps the glossy snow,
All is their prize. They fasten on the steed,
Press him to earth, and pierce his mighty heart.
Nor can the bull his awful front defend,
Or shake the murdering savages away.
Rapacious, at the mother's throat they fly,
And tear the screaming infant from her breast.
The godlike face of man avails him nought.

In

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E'en beauty, force divine! at whose bright glance-s

The generous lion stands in soften'd gaze,
Here bleeds, a hapless undistinguish'd prey.
But if, appriz'd of the severe attack,
The country be shut up; lur'd by the scent,
On church yards drear (inhuman to relate!)

The shrouded body from the grave; o'er which,

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Mix'd with foul shades, and frighted ghosts, they howl.
Among those hilly regions, where, embrac'd