Fish up

his dirty and dependent bread

From pools and ditches of the commonwealth,

Sordid and sick'ning at his own success.

Ambition, av'rice, penury incurr'd

By endless riot, vanity, the lust

Of pleasure and variety, dispatch,

As duly as the swallows disappear,

The world of wand'ring knights and squires to

town.

London ingulphs them all! The shark is there, And the shark's prey; the spendthrift, and the leech That sucks him. There the sycophant, and he Who, with bare-headed and obsequious bows, Begs a warm office, doom'd to a cold jail

And groat per diem, if his patron frown.

The levee swarms, as if, in golden pomp,

Were character'd on ev'ry statesman's door,

"BATTER'D AND BANKRUPT FORTUNES MENDED

HERE."

These are the charms that sully and eclipse

The charms of nature. 'Tis the cruel gripe
That lean hard-handed poverty inflicts,

The hope of better things, the chance to win,
The wish to shine, the thirst to be amus'd,
That at the sound of winter's hoary wing
Unpeople all our countries of such herds

Of flutt'ring, loit'ring, cringing, begging, loose
And wanton vagrants, as make London, vast
And boundless as it is, a crowded coop.

Oh thou, resort and mart of all the earth,
Chequer'd with all complexions of mankind,
And spotted with all crimes; in whom I see
Much that I love, and more that I admire,
And all that I abhor; thou freckled fair,
That pleasest and yet shock'st me, I can laugh
And I can weep, can hope, and can despond,
Feel wrath and pity, when I think on thee!
Ten righteous would have say'd a city once,

And thou hast many righteous.-Well for thee! That salt preserves thee; more corrupted else,

And therefore more obnoxious, at this hour

Than Sodom in her day had pow'r to be,

For whom God heard his Abr'am plead in vain.

THE TASK.

BOOK IV.