Here may be seen, in bloodless pomp array'd, The pasteboard triumph and the cavalcade; Processions form'd for piety and love,— A mistress or a saint in every grove. By sports like these are all their cares beguiled,— The sports of children satisfy the child; Each nobler aim, repress'd by long control, Now sinks at last, or feebly mans the soul; While low delights, succeeding fast behind, In happier meanness occupy the mind. As in those domes where Cæsars once bore sway, Defaced by time and tottering in decay, There in the ruin, heedless of the dead, The shelter-seeking peasant builds his shed: And, wondering man could want the larger pile, Exults, and owns his cottage with a smile. [Illustration: "_Here may be seen, in bloodless pomp array'd, The pasteboard triumph and the cavalcade._"—_p._ 180. ] My soul, turn from them; turn we to survey Where rougher climes a nobler race display, Where the bleak Swiss their stormy mansion tread, And force a churlish soil for scanty bread: No product here the barren hills afford, But man and steel, the soldier and his sword; No vernal blooms their torpid rocks array, But winter lingering chills the lap of May; No zephyr fondly sues the mountain's breast, But meteors glare, and stormy glooms invest. Yet still, even here, content can spread a charm, Redress the clime, and all its rage disarm. Though poor the peasant's hut, his feast though small, He sees his little lot the lot of all; Sees no contiguous palace rear its head, To shame the meanness of his humble shed; No costly lord the sumptuous banquet deal, To make him loathe his vegetable meal; But calm, and bred in ignorance and toil, Each wish contracting, fits him to the soil. Cheerful, at morn, he wakes from short repose, Breathes the keen air, and carols as he goes; With patient angle trolls the finny deep, Or drives his venturous ploughshare to the steep; Or seeks the den where snow-tracks mark the way, And drags the struggling savage into day. At night returning, every labour sped. He sits him down the monarch of a shed; Smiles by his cheerful fire, and round surveys His children's looks, that brighten at the blaze; While his loved partner, boastful of her hoard, Displays her cleanly platter on the board: And haply too some pilgrim, thither led, With many a tale repays the nightly bed. Thus every good his native wilds impart Imprints the patriot passion on his heart; And e'en those ills that round his mansion rise, Enhance the bliss his scanty fund supplies. Dear is that shed to which his soul conforms, And dear that hill which lifts him to the storms; And as a child, when scaring sounds molest, Clings close and closer to the mother's breast, So the loud torrent, and the whirlwind's roar, But bind him to his native mountains more. Such are the charms to barren states assign'd; Their wants but few, their wishes all confined. Yet let them only share the praises due;