In these, ere triflers half their wish obtain, Ye friends to truth, ye ftatesmen, who furvey The rich man's joys encrease, the poor's decay, 'Tis your's to judge, how wide the limits ftand Between a splendid and an happy land. Proud fwells the tide with loads of freighted ore, And shouting Folly hails them from her shore; Hoards, even beyond the mifers' wifh abound, And rich men flock from all the world around. Yet count our gains. This wealth is but a name That leaves our useful products ftill the fame. Not fo the lofs. The man of wealth and pride, Takes up a space that many poor supplied; Space for his lake; his park's extended bounds; Space for his horfes, equipage, and hounds; The robe that wraps his limbs in filken floth, Has robbed the neighbouring fields of half their growth; His feat, where folitary sports are seen, As fome fair female unadorned and plain, Secure to please while youth confirms her reign, Slights every borrowed charm that dress supplies, Nor fhares with art the triumph of her eyes. But when those charms are paft, for charms are frail, When time advances, and when lovers fail, She then shines forth, follicitous to blefs, In all the glaring impotence of dress. Thus fares the land, by luxury betrayed; In Nature's fimpleft charms at first arrayed; But verging to decline, its fplendours rise, Its vistas strike, its palaces furprize; While fcourged by famine from the fmiling land, The mournful peasant leads his humble band; And while he finks without one arm to fave, Where then, ah where, fhall Poverty refide, If to the city fped---What waits him there? Here, while the proud their long-drawn pomps difplay, There the black gibbet glooms befide the way. The dome where Pleasure holds her midnight reign, Are these thy ferious thoughts? Ah, turn thine eyes And pinch'd with cold, and fhrinking from the fhower, When idly firft, ambitious of the town, She left her wheel and robes of country brown. Do thine, fweet AUBURN, thine, the lovelieft train, Do thy fair tribes participate her pain? Even now, perhaps, by cold and hunger led, Ah, no. To distant climes, a dreary fcene, Far different there from all that charm'd before, Those matted woods where birds forget to fing, Those poisonous fields with rank luxuriance crowned, Mingling the ravaged landfchape with the skies. |