I fee a column of flow rifing smoke
Overtop the lofty wood, that skirts the wild.
A vagabond and useless tribe there eat
Their miserable meal. A kettle, flung
Between two poles upon a ftick transverse,
Receives the morfel-flesh obscene of dog,
Or vermin, or at beft of cock purloined
From his accuftomed perch. Hard-faring race!
They pick their fuel out of every hedge,
Which, kindled with dry leaves, juft faves unquenched
The spark of life. The sportive wind blows wide
Their fluttering rags, and shows a tawny skin,
The vellum of the pedigree they claim.
Great skill have they in palmistry, and more
To conjure clean away the gold they touch,
Conveying worthlefs drofs into its place;
Loud when they beg, dumb only when they steal.
Strange! that a creature rational, and caft
In human mould, should brutalize by choice
His nature; and, though capable of arts,
By which the world might profit, and himself,
Self-banished from fociety, prefer
Such fqualid floth to honourable toil!
Yet even these, though feigning fickness oft
They swathe the forehead, drag the limping limb,
And vex their flesh with artificial fores,
Can change their whine into a mirthful note,
When fafe occafion offers; and with dance,
And mufic of the bladder and the bag,
Beguile their woes, and make the woods refound.
Such health and gaiety of heart enjoy
The houseless rovers of the sylvan world;
And, breathing wholesome air, and wandering much, Need other phyfic none to heal the effects
Of loathfome diet, penury, and cold.
Bleft he, though undistinguished from the crowd By wealth or dignity, who dwells fecure, Where man, by nature fierce, has laid afide
His fierceness, having learnt, though flow to learn,
The manners and the arts of civil life.
His wants indeed are many; but supply
Is obvious, placed within the easy reach
Of temperate wishes and induftrious hands.
Here virtue thrives as in her proper foil;
Not rude and furly, and befet with thorns,
And terrible to fight, as when she springs
(If ever she spring spontaneous) in remote
And barbarous climes, where violence prevails,
And ftrength is lord of all; but gentle, kind,
By culture tamed, by liberty refreshed,
And all her fruits by radiant truth matured.
War and the chafe engrofs the favage whole;
War followed for revenge, or to fupplant
The envied tenants of fome happier spot:
The chafe for fuftenance, precarious truft!
His hard condition with fevere conftraint
Binds all his faculties, forbids all growth
Of wisdom, proves a school, in which he learns
Sly circumvention, unrelenting hate,
Mean felf-attachment, and scarce aught befide.
Thus fare the fhivering natives of the north,
And thus the rangers of the western world,
Where it advances far into the deep,
Towards the Antarctic. Even the favoured ifles
So lately found, although the conftant fun
Cheer all their feafons with a grateful smile,
Can boaft but little virtue; and inert
Through plenty lose in morals, what they gain
In manners-victims of luxurious eafe.
These therefore I can pity, placed remote
From all, that fcience traces, art invents,
Or inspiration teaches; and enclosed
In boundless oceans, never to be paffed
By navigators uninformed as they,
Or ploughed perhaps by British bark again :
But far beyond the reft, and with most cause,
Thee, gentle favage! whom no love of thee
Or thine, but curiofity perhaps,
Or else vain glory, prompted us to draw
Forth from thy native bowers, to fhew thee here
With what fuperior skill we can abufe
The gifts of Providence, and squander life.
The dream is past; and thou haft found again
Thy cocoas and bananas, palms and yams,
And homeftall thatched with leaves. But haft thou found Their former charms? And having feen our ftate,
Our palaces, our ladies, and our pomp
Of equipage, our gardens, and our sports,
And heard our mufic; are thy fimple friends,
Thy fimple fare, and all thy plain delights,
As dear to thee as once? And have thy joys
Loft nothing by comparison with our's?
Rude as thou art, (for we returned thee rude
And ignorant, except of outward show)
I cannot think thee yet fo dull of heart
And fpiritlefs, as never to regret
Sweets tasted here, and left as foon as known.
Methinks I fee thee ftraying on the beach,
And asking of the furge, that bathes thy foot,
If ever it has washed our diftant fhore.
I fee thee weep, and thine are honeft tears,
A patriot's for his country: thou art fad
At thought of her forlorn and abject state,
From which no power of thine can raise her up.
Thus fancy paints thee, and though apt to err,
Perhaps errs little when the paints thee thus.
She tells me too that duly every morn
Thou climbeft the mountain top, with eager eye
Exploring far and wide the watery waste
For fight of ship from England. Every speck
Seen in the dim horizon turns thee pale
With conflict of contending hopes and fears.
But comes at laft the dull and dusky eve,
And fends thee to thy cabin, well-prepared
To dream all night of what the day denied.
Alas! expect it not.
We found no bait
To tempt us in thy country. Doing good,
Difinterested good, is not our trade.
We travel far, 'tis true, but not for nought;
And must be bribed to compass earth again
By other hopes and richer fruits than your's.
But though true worth and virtue in the mild And genial foil of cultivated life
Thrive moft, and may perhaps thrive only there, Yet not in cities oft: in proud and gay
And gain-devoted cities. Thither flow,
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