Peculiar, and exclusively her own.

Beneath the open sky she spreads the feast;
'Tis free to all-'tis ev'ry day renew'd;
Who scorns it starves deservedly at home.
He does not scorn it, who, imprison'd long
In some unwholesome dungeon, and a prey
To sallow sickness, which the vapours, dank
And clammy, of his dark abode have bred,
Escapes at last to liberty and light:

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.

1

Nor yet the mariner, his blood inflam'd
With acrid salts; his very heart athirst

To gaze at Nature in her green array,
Upon the ship's tall side he stands, possess'd

With visions prompted by intense desire:

Fair fields appear below, such as he left,
Far distant, such as he would die to find-
He seeks them headlong, and is seen no more.

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 A pedlar's pack, that bows the bearer down. Health suffers, and the spirits ebb; the heart Recoils from its own choice-at the full feast Is famish'd-finds no music in the song,

No smartness in the jest; and wonders why.

Yet thousands still desire to journey on,

Though halt, and weary of the path they tread. The paralytic, who can hold her cards,

But cannot play them, borrows a friend's hand

To deal and shuffle, to divide and sort,

Her mingled suits and sequences; and sits,

Spectatress both and spectacle, a sad

And silent cypher, while her

proxy plays.

Others are dragg'd into the crowded room
Between supporters; and, once seated, sit,
Through downright inability to rise,

Till the stout bearers lift the corpse again.
These speak a loud memento. Yet ev'n these
Themselves love life, and cling to it, as he
That overhangs a torrent to a twig.

They love it, and yet loath it; fear to die,

Yet scorn the purposes for which they live.

Then wherefore not renounce them? No-the

dread,

The slavish dread of solitude, that breeds

Reflection and remorse, the fear of shame,

And their invet'rate habits, all forbid.

Whom call we gay? That honour has been long
The boast of mere pretenders to the name.
The innocent are gay-the lark is gay,

That dries his feathers, saturate with dew,
Beneath the rosy cloud, while yet the beams
Of day-spring overshoot his humble nest.
The peasant too, a witness of his song,
Himself a songster, is as gay as he.

But save me from the gaiety of those

Whose head-aches nail them to a noon-day bed;
And save me too from their's whose haggard eyes
Flash desperation, and betray their pangs
For property stripp'd off by cruel chance;

From gaiety that fills the bones with pain,
The mouth with blasphemy, the heart with woe.

The earth was made so various, that the mind

Of desultory man, studious of change,

And pleas'd with novelty, might be indulg'd.
Prospects, however lovely, may be seen

Till half their beauties fade; the weary sight,
Too well acquainted with their smiles, slides off,
Fastidious, seeking less familiar scenes.

Then snug enclosures in the shelter'd vale,
Where frequent hedges intercept the eye,
Delight us; happy to renounce awhile,

Not senseless of its charms, what still we love,
That such short absence may endear it more.
Then forests, or the savage rock, may please,
That hides the sea-mew in his hollow clefts
Above the reach of man. His hoary head,
Conspicuous many a league, the mariner,
Bound homeward, and in hope already there,
Greets with three cheers exulting. At his waist
A girdle of half-wither'd shrubs he shows,

And at his feet the baffled billows die.

The common, overgrown with fern, and rough