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 feasts though small He sees his little lot the lot of all; [Pg 6530]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, Breasts the keen air, and carols as he goes; With patient angle trolls the finny deep, Or drives his venturous plowshare to the steep; Or seeks the den where snow-tracks mark the way, And drags the struggling savage into day. At night returning, every labor 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 even 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 assigned; Their wants but few, their wishes all confined. Yet let them only share the praises due,— If few their wants, their pleasures are but few; For every want that stimulates the breast Becomes a source of pleasure when redrest. Whence from such lands each pleasing science flies That first excites desire, and then supplies; Unknown to them, when sensual pleasures cloy, To fill the languid pause with finer joy; Unknown those powers that raise the soul to flame, Catch every nerve, and vibrate through the frame. [Pg 6531]Their level life is but a smoldering fire, Unquenched by want, unfanned by strong desire; Unfit for raptures, or if raptures cheer On some high festival of once a year, In wild excess the vulgar breast takes fire, Till, buried in debauch, the bliss expire. But not their joys alone thus coarsely flow: Their morals, like their pleasures, are but low; For as refinement stops, from sire to son Unaltered, unimproved, the manners run;