From these the feeble heart and long-fall'n mind
An easy compensation seem to find.

Here may be seen, in bloodless pomp array'd,
The pasteboard triumph and the cavalcade;
Processions form'd for piety and love,

A mistress or a saint in ev'ry grove.

By sports like these are all their cares beguil'd;
The sports of children satisfy the child:
Each nobler aim, represt by long control,

Now sinks at last, or feebly mans the soul;
While low delights, succeeding fast behind,
In happier meanness occupy the mind:

As in those domes, where Cesars once bore sway,
Defac'd by time, and tott'ring in decay,

There in the ruin, heedless of the dead,
The shelter-seeking peasant builds his shed;
And, wond'ring man could want the larger pile,
Exults, and owns his cottage with a smile.

My soul, turn from them, turn we to survey
Where rougher climes a nobler race display,
Where the bleak Swiss their stormy mansions tread,
And force a churlish soil for scanty bread:

No product here the barren hills afford,
But man and steel, the soldier and his sword.
No vernal blooms their torpid rocks array,
But winter ling'ring chills the lap of May;
No zephyr fondly sues the mountain's breast,
But meteors glare, and stormy glooms invest.

Yet still, e'en here, content can spread a charm, Redress the clime, and all its rage disarm.

Though poor the peasant's hut, his feasts though small, He sees his little lot the lot of all;

Sees no contiguous palace rear its head,

To shame the meanness of his humble shed;
No costly lord the sumptuous banquet deal,

To make him loath his vegetable meal;
But calm, and bred in ignorance and toil,
Each wish contracting, fits him to the soil.
Cheerful at morn he wakes from short repose,
Breathes the keen air, and carols as he goes;
With patient angle trolls the finny deep,

Or drives his vent'rous ploughshare to the steep;
Or seeks the den where snow-tracks mark the way,
And drags the struggling savage into day,

At night returning, ev'ry labour sped,

He sits him down the monarch of a shed;
Smiles by his cheerful fire, and round surveys

His children's looks, that brighten at the blaze;
While his lov'd partner, boastful of her hoard,
Displays her cleanly platter on the board:
And haply too some pilgrim, thither led,
With many a tale repays the nightly bed.

Thus ev'ry good his native wilds impart,
Imprints the patriot passion on his heart;

And e'en those ills, that round his mansion rise,
Enhance the bliss his scanty fund supplies:

Dear is that shed to which his soul conforms,
And dear that hill which lifts him to the storms;
And as a child, when scaring sounds molest,
Clings close and closer to the mother's breast,
So the loud torrent, and the whirlwind's roar,
But bind him to his native mountains more.

Such are the charms to barren states assign'd; Their wants but few, their wishes all confin'd: Yet let them only share the praises due,

If few their wants, their pleasures are but few;

ASTOK, LENOX Ane

TILDEN FOUNDATIONS