Apply'd their quire; and winds and waters flow'd
In confonance. Such were thofe prime of days.

But now those white unblemish'd manners, whence
The fabling poets took their golden age,

Are found no more amid these iron times,
Thefe dregs of life! Now the diftemper'd mind
Has loft that concord of harmonious

powers, Which forms the foul of happiness; and all

Is off the poife within: the paffions all

Have burst their bounds; and reafon half extinct,

Or impotent, or elfe approving, fees

The foul diforder. Senseless, and deform'd,
Convulfive anger ftorms at large; or pale,
And filent, fettles into fell revenge.
Bafe envy withers at another's joy,
And hates that excellence it cannot reach.
Defponding fear, of feeble fancies full,
Weak and unmanly, loosens every power.
Even love itself is bitterness of foul,
A penfive anguish pining at the heart;
Or, funk to fordid intereft, feels no more
That noble wish, that never cloy'd defire,
Which, felfish joy disdaining, seeks alone
To blefs the dearer object of its flame.
Hope fickens with extravagance; and grief,

Of life impatient, into madness fwells;
Or in dead filence waftes the weeping hours.
These, and a thousand mix'd emotions more,
From ever-changing views of good and ill,
Form'd infinitely various, vex the mind

With endless ftorm: whence, deeply rankling, grows
The partial thought, a listless unconcern,

Cold, and averting from our neighbour's good;
Then dark disgust, and hatred, winding wiles,
Coward deceit, and ruffian violence:

At laft, extinct each focial feeling, fell
And joyless inhumanity pervades

And petrifies the heart. Nature disturb'd

Is deem'd, vindictive, to have chang'd her courfe.
Hence, in old dufky time, a deluge came:
When the deep-cleft difparting orb, that arch'd
The central waters round, impetuous rush'd,
With univerfal burft, into the gulph,

And o'er the high-pil'd hills of fractur'd earth
Wide dash'd the waves, in undulation vast;
Till, from the center to the ftreaming clouds,
A shoreless ocean tumbled round the globe.

The Seafons fince have, with feverer fway, Opprefs'd a broken world: the Winter keen Shook forth his waste of snows; and Summer fhot

His peftilential heats. Great Spring, before,

Green'd all the year; and fruits and blossoms blush'd,

In focial sweetness, on the felf-fame bough.

Pure was the temperate air; an even calm

Perpetual reign'd, fave what the zephyrs bland
Breath'd o'er the blue expanfe: or then nor ftorms
Were taught to blow, nor hurricanes to rage;
Sound flept the waters; no fulphureous glooms
Swell'd in the sky, and fent the lightning forth;
While fickly damps, and cold autumnal fogs,
Hung not, relaxing, on the springs of life.
But now, of turbid elements the sport,
From clear to cloudy toft, from hot to cold,
And dry to moift, with inward-eating change,
Our drooping days are dwindled down to nought,
Their period finish'd ere 'tis well begun.

And yet the wholesome herb neglected dies;
Though with the pure exhilarating foul
Of nutriment and health, and vital powers,
Beyond the search of art, 'tis copious bleft.
For, with hot ravine fir'd, enfanguin'd Man
Is now become the lion of the plain,

And worse. The wolf, who from the nightly fold
Fierce drags the bleating prey, ne'er drunk her milk,
Nor wore her warming fleece: nor has the steer,

At whofe ftrong cheft the deadly tyger hangs,
E'er plow'd for him. They too are temper'd high,
With hunger ftung and wild neceffity,

Nor lodges pity in their fhaggy breast.

But Man, whom Nature form'd of milder clay,

With every kind emotion in his heart,

And taught alone to weep; while from her lap
She pours ten thousand delicacies, herbs,
And fruits, as numerous as the drops of rain
Or beams that gave them birth: fhall he, fair form!
Who wears sweet fmiles, and looks erect on Heaven,
E'er ftoop to mingle,with the prowling herd,
And dip his tongue in gore? The beast of prey,
Blood-ftain'd, deferves to bleed: but you, ye flocks,
What have ye done; ye peaceful people, what,
To merit death? you, who have given us milk
In luscious ftreams, and lent us your own coat
Against the winter's cold? And the plain ox,
That harmless, honeft, guilelefs animal,
In what has he offended? he, whofe toil,
Patient and ever ready, clothes the land
With all the pomp of harveft; fhall he bleed,
And struggling groan beneath the cruel hands
Even of the clown he feeds? and that, perhaps,
To fwell the riot of th' autumnal feast,

Won by his labour? Thus the feeling heart
Would tenderly fuggeft: but 'tis enough,
In this late age, adventurous, to have touch'd
Light on the numbers of the Samian fage.
High HEAVEN forbids the bold presumptuous strain,
Whose wifeft will has fix'd us in a state

That must not yet to pure perfection rise.
Now when the first foul torrent of the brooks,
Swell'd with the vernal rains, is ebb'd away,
And, whitening, down their moffy-tinctur'd stream
Defcends the billowy foam: now is the time,
While yet the dark-brown water aids the guile,
To tempt the trout. The well-diffembled fly,
The rod fine-tapering with elastic spring,
Snatch'd from the hoary fteed the floating line,
And all thy flender watery ftores prepare.
But let not on thy hook the tortur'd worm,
Convulfive, twift in agonizing folds;
Which, by rapacious hunger fwallow'd deep,
Gives, as you tear it from the bleeding breast
Of the weak helpless uncomplaining wretch,
Harsh pain and horror to the tender hand.

When with his lively ray the potent fun
Has pierc'd the ftreams, and rous'd the finny race,
Then, iffuing cheerful, to thy fport repair;