As some fair female, unadorned and plain,
Secure to please while youth confirms her reign,

In these, ere triflers half their wish obtain,
The toiling pleasure sickens into pain,
And, even while Fashion's brightest arts Slights every borrowed charm that dress sup-

decoy,

The heart, distrusting, asks if this be joy.

Ye friends to truth, ye statesmen who sur

vey

plies,

Nor shares with Art the triumph of her eyes, But when those charms are past-for charms are frail—

When time advances and when lovers fail,

In all the glaring impotence of dress,

The rich man's joys increase, the poor's She then shines forth, solicitous to bless, decay, 'Tis yours to judge how wide the limits Thus fares the land by Luxury betrayed:

stand

Between a splendid and a happy land.
Proud swells the tide with loads of freighted

ore,

And shouting Folly hails them from her shore;

Hoards e'en beyond the miser's wish abound, And rich men flock from all the world around.

In Nature's simplest charms at first arrayed,
But, verging to decline, its splendors rise,
Its vistas strike, its palaces surprise;
While, scourged by Famine, from the smil-
ing land

The mournful peasant leads his humble band ;
And while he sinks, without one arm to save,
The country blooms-a garden and a grave.

Yet count our gains: this wealth is but a Where, then-ah! where-shall Poverty reside

name

same.

That leaves our useful products still the To 'scape the pressure of contiguous Pride? If to some common's fenceless limits strayed Not so the loss. The man of wealth and He drives his flock to pick the scanty blade, Those fenceless fields the sons of Wealth divide,

pride

Takes up a space that many poor supplied—
Space for his lake, his park's extended
bounds;

Space for his horses, equipage and hounds;
The robe that wraps his limbs in silken sloth
Has robbed the neighboring fields of half
their growth;

And even the bare-worn common is denied.
If to the city sped, what waits him there?
To see profusion that he must not share;
To see ten thousand baneful arts combined
To pamper luxury and thin mankind;
To see those joys the sons of Pleasure know
Extorted from his fellow-creature's woe.
Here while the courtier glitters in brocade,
There the pale artist plies the sickly trade;
Here while the proud their long-drawn pomps
display,

There the black gibbet glooms beside the

way.

The dome where Pleasure holds her midnight | Far different there from all that charmed reign before Here, richly decked, admits the gorgeous The various terrors of that horrid shore— Those blazing suns that dart a downward

And, shuddering still to face the distant | Even now the devastation is begun, deep, And half the business of destruction done: Returned and wept, and still returned to Even now, methinks, as pondering here I weep!

The good old sire, the first, prepared to go

To new-found worlds, and wept for others'

woe,

But for himself, in conscious virtue brave,
He only wished for worlds beyond the
grave.

stand,

I see the rural virtues leave the land:
Down where yon anchoring vessel spreads

the sail

That idly waiting flaps with every gale,
Downward they move-a melancholy band—
Pass from the shore and darken all the
strand.

Contented toil and hospitable care
And kind connubial tenderness are there,
And piety with wishes placed above,

His lovely daughter, lovelier in her tears,
The fond companion of his helpless years,
Silent went next, neglectful of her charms,
And left a lover's for a father's arms.
With louder plaints the mother spoke her And steady loyalty and faithful love.

woes,

rose,

And thou, sweet Poetry, thou loveliest maid, And blessed the cot where every pleasure Still first to fly where sensual joys invade, Unfit, in these degenerate times of shame, And kissed her thoughtless babes with many To catch the heart or strike for honest fame; a tear, Dear, charming nymph, neglected and decried,

And clasped them close, in sorrow doubly

dear;

My shame in crowds, my solitary pride;

Whilst her fond husband strove to lend Thou source of all my bliss and all my woe,

That Trade's proudempire hastes to swift decay, | It comes with memories deeply fraught
As ocean sweeps the labored mole away;
While self-dependent power can time defy,
As rocks resist the billows and the sky.

WELVE years have flown since last I A brief but eloquent reply!