Thy friendship thus thy judgment wronging, With praises not to me belonging, In task more meet for mightiest powers, Wouldst thou engage my thriftless hours. But say, my Erskine, hast thou weigh'd 115 That secret power by all obey'd, Which warps not less the passive mind, Its source conceal'd or undefined; Whether an impulse, that has birth Soon as the infant wakes on earth, 120 One with our feelings and our powers, And rather part of us than ours; Or whether fitlier term'd the sway Of habit, form'd in early day? Howe'er derived, its force confest 125 Rules with despotic sway the breast, And drags us on by viewless chain, While taste and reason plead in vain. Look east, and ask the Belgian why, Beneath Batavia's sultry sky, 130 He seeks not eager to inhale The freshness of the mountain gale, Content to rear his whiten'd wall Beside the dank and dull canal? He'll say, from youth he loved to see 135 The white sail gliding by the tree. Or see yon weatherbeaten hind, Whose sluggish herds before him wind, Whose tatter'd plaid and rugged cheek His northern clime and kindred speak; 140 Through England's laughing meads he goes, And England's wealth around him flows; Ask, if it would content him well, At ease in those gay plains to dwell, Where hedge-rows spread a verdant screen, 145 And spires and forests intervene, And the neat cottage peeps between? No! not for these will he exchange His dark Lochaber's boundless range; Not for fair Devon's meads forsake 150 Bennevis grey, and Carry's lake.