While oft some temple's mould'ring top between,
With venerable grandeur marks the scene.
Could Nature's bounty satisfy the breast,
The sons of Italy were surely blest.
Whatever fruits in different climes are found,
That proudly rise or humbly court the ground,
Whatever blooms in torrid tracts appear,
Whose bright succession decks the varied year;
Whatever sweets salute the northern sky
With vernal lives that blossom but to die ;
These here disporting, own the kindred soil,
Nor ask luxuriance from the planter's toil;
While sea-born gales their gelid wings expand
To winnow fragrance round the smiling land.
But small the bliss that sense alone bestows,
And sensual bliss is all this nation knows.
In florid beauty groves and fields appear,
Men seem the only growth that dwindles here.
Contrasted faults through all their manners reign,
Though poor, luxurious, though submissive, vain,
Though grave, yet trifling, zealous, yet untrue,
And even in penance planning sins anew.
All evils here contaminate the mind,
That opulence departed, leaves behind;
For wealth was theirs, nor far remov'd the date,
When commerce proudly flourish'd through the state :
At her command the palace learnt to rise,
Again the long-fall'n column sought the skies;
The canvas glow'd beyond even Nature warm,
The pregnant quarry teem'd with human form.
But, more unsteady than the southern gale,
Soon Commerce turn'd on other shores her sail;
And late the nation found, with fruitless skill,
Their former strength was now plethoric ill.
Yet, though to fortune lost, here still abide
Some splendid arts, the wrecks of former pride;
From which the feeble heart and long fall'n mind
An easy compensation seem to find.
Here may be seen, in bloodless pomp array'd,
The paste-board triumph and the cavalcade ;
Processions form'd for piety and love,
A mistress or a saint in every grove.
By sports like these are all their cares beguil'd,
The sports of children satisfy the child;
At sports like these, while foreign arms advance,
In passive ease they leave the world to chance.
When struggling Virtue sinks by long controul,
She leaves at last, or feebly mans the soul;
While low delights, succeeding fast behind,
In happier meanness occupy the mind :
And in those domes, where Cæsars once bore sway,
Defac'd by time and tottering in decay,
Amidst 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;
D
satires, his turbulence is said to be force, and his phrenzy fire.
What reception a Poem may find, which has neither abuse, party, nor blank verse to support it, I cannot tell, nor am I much solicitous to know. My aims are right. Without espousing the cause of any party, I have attempted to moderate the rage of all. I have endeavoured to shew, that there may be equal happiness in other states, though differently governed from our own; that each state has a peculiar principle of happiness, and that this principle in each state, and in our own in particular, may be carried to a mischievous excess. There are few can judge, better than youself, How far these positions are illustrated in this Poem.
Your most affectionate Brother,
REMOTE, unfriended, melancholy, slow,
Or by the lazy Scheld, or wandering Po; Or onward, where the rude Carinthian boor Against the houseless stranger shuts the door; Or where Campania's plain forsaken lies,
A weary waste expanded to the skies.
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