From the dry bed where streams no longer run? Have you, like school-boy, mingling play and toil, 110 Dug for the ground-nut, and enjoy’d the spoil? Or chafed with feverish hand the ripening wheat, Resolved to fast, and yet compell’d to eat? Say, did you this, and drink the crystal spring, And think yourself an abdicated king, Driv’n from your state by a rebellious race? And, in your pride contending with disgrace, Could you your hunger in your anger lose, And call the ills you bear the ways you choose? Thus, on myself depending, I began 120 To feel the pride of a neglected man; Not yet correct, but still I could command Unshaken nerves, and a determined hand. “Lo! men at work!” I said, “and I, a man, Can work! I feel it is my pride, I can.” This said, I wander’d on, and join’d the poor, Assumed a labourer’s dress, and was no more Than labour made—Upon the road I broke Stones for my bread, and startled at the stroke; But every day the labour seem’d more light, 130 And sounder, sweeter still the sleep of every night. “Thus will I live,” I cried, “nor more return To herd with men, whose love and hate I spurn. All creatures toil; the beast, if tamed or free, Must toil for daily sustenance like me; The feather’d people hunt as well as sing, And catch their flying food upon the wing. The fish, the insect, all who live, employ Their powers to keep on life, or to enjoy, Their life th’ enjoyment; thus will I proceed, 140 A man from man’s detested favours freed.” Thus was I reasoning, when at length there came A gift, a present, but without a name. “That Spinster-witch, has she then found a way To cure her conscience, and her Nephew pay, And sends her pittance? Well, and let it buy What sweetens labour; need I this deny? I thank her not; it is as if I found The fairy-gift upon this stony ground.” Still I wrought on; again occurred the day, 150 And then the same addition to my pay. Then, lo! another Friend, if not the same, For that I knew not, with a message came— “Canst keep accounts?” the man was pleased to ask— “I could not cash!—but that the harder task.” “Yet try,” he said; and I was quickly brought To Lawyer Snell, and in his office taught. Not much my pay, but my desires were less, And I for evil days reserved th’ excess. Such day occurr’d not: quickly came there one, 160 When I was told my present work was done. My Friend then brought me to a building large, And gave far weightier business to my charge. There I was told I had accounts to keep Of those vast Works, where wonders never sleep, Where spindles, bobbins, rovings, threads, and pins, [Make] up the complex mass that ever spins. There, at my desk, in my six feet of room, I noted every power of every loom; Sounds of all kinds I heard from mortal lungs— 170 Eternal battle of unwearied tongues,