Reflections on Bodies corporate.

But man, associated and leagued with man
By regal warrant, or self-joined by bond
For interest-sake, or swarming into clans
Beneath one head for purposes of war,

Like flowers selected from the rest, and bound
And bundled close to fill some crowded vase,
Fades rapidly, and by compression marred,
Contracts defilement not to be endured.

Hence chartered boroughs are such public plagues;
And burghers, men immaculate perhaps

In all their private functions, once combined,
Become a loathsome body, only fit

For dissolution, hurtful to the main.
Hence merchants, unimpeachable of sin
Against the charities of domestic life,
Incorporated seem at once to lose

Their nature; and disclaiming all regard
For mercy and the common rights of man,
Build factories with blood, conducting trade
At the sword's point, and dying the white robe

Reflections on Bodies corporate.

Of innocent commercial justice red.
Hence too the field of glory, as the world
Misdeems it, dazzled by its bright array,
With all its majesty of thundering pomp,
Enchanting music and immortal wreaths,
Is but a school, where thoughtlessness is taught
On principle, where foppery atones

For folly, gallantry for every vice.

But slighted as it is, and by the great
Abandoned, and, which still I more regret,
Infected with the manners and the modes
It knew not once, the country wins me still.
I never framed a wish, or formed a plan,
That flattered me with hopes of earthly bliss,
But there I laid the scene. There early strayed
My fancy, ere yet liberty of choice

Had found me, or the hope of being free.
My very dreams were rural; rural too.

The first-born efforts of my youthful muse,
Sportive and jingling her poetic bells,

The love of Rural Objects.

Ere yet her ear was mistress of their powers.

No bard could please me but whose lyre was tuned
To Nature's praises. Heroes and their feats
Fatigued me, never weary of the pipe
Of Tityrus, assembling, as he sang,

The rustic throng beneath his favorite beech.
Then Milton had indeed a poet's charms:
New to my taste his Paradise surpassed
The struggling efforts of my boyish tongue
To speak its excellence. I danced for joy.
I marvelled much that, at so ripe an age
As twice seven years, his beauties had then first
Engaged my wonder; and admiring still,
And still admiring, with regret supposed
The joy half lost because not sooner found.
There too enamoured of the life I loved,
Pathetic in its praise, in its pursuit

Determined, and possessing it at last

With transports, such as favoured lovers feel,
I studied, prized, and wished that I had known,

The love of Rural Objects natural to all,

Ingenious Cowley! and, though now reclaimed
By modern lights from on erroneous taste,
I cannot but lament thy splendid wit
Entangled in the cobwebs of the schools.

I still revere thee, courtly though retired;
Though stretched at ease in Chertsey's silent bowers,
Not unemployed; and finding rich amends

For a lost world in solitude and verse.

'Tis born with all: the love of nature's works
Is an ingredient in the compound man,
Infused at the creation of the kind.

And, though the Almighty Maker has throughout
Discriminated each from each; by strokes
And touches of his hand, with so much art
Diversified, that two were never found

Twins at all points-yet this obtains in all,

That all discern a beauty in his works,

And all can taste them: minds, that have been formed

And tutored with a relish more exact,

But none without some relish, none unmoved.