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None more admires, the painter's magic skill,
Who shows me that which I shall never see,
Conveys a distant country into mine,
And throws Italian light on English walls :
But imitative strokes can do no more
Than please the eye—sweet Nature's ev'ry sense.
The air salubrious of her lofty hills,
The cheering fragrance of her dewy vales,
And music of her woods—no works of man
May rival these, these all bespeak a pow'r
Peculiar, and exclusively her own.
Beneath the open sky she spreads the feast;
'Tis free to all—'tis ev'ry day renewd;
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.
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,

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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 cipher, 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 e’en 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 invetrate 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 dayspring overshoot his humble nest. The peasant too, a witness of his song,

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be seen

Himself a songster, is as gay as he.
But save me from the gaiety of those,
Whose headachs nail them to a noonday bed;
And save me too from theirs, whose haggard eyes
Flash desperation, and betray their pangs
For property stripp'd off by cruel chance;
From gaiety, that fills the hones with pain,
The mouth with blasphemy, the heart with woe.

The earth was made so various, that the mind
Of desnltory man, studious of change,
And pleased with novelty, might be indulg'd.
Prospects, however lovely,

may 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 a while, 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 With prickly gorse, that, shapeless and deform’d, And dang’rous to the touch, has yet its bloom, And decks itself with ornaments of gold, Yields no unpleasing ramble; there the turf Smells fresh, and, rich in odorif'rous herbs And fungous fruits of earth, regales the sense With luxury of unexpected sweets.

There often wanders one, whom better days Saw better clad, in cloak of satin trimm'd

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ASTOR, L TILDEN FOUND!

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