Yes, brother, curse with me that baleful hour When first ambition struck at regal power; And thus polluting honor in its source, 395 Gave wealth to sway the mind with double force. Have we not seen, round Britain's peopled shore, Her useful sons exchanged for useless ore,[47] Seen all her triumphs but destruction haste, Like flaring tapers brightening as they waste? 400 Seen opulence, her grandeur to maintain, Lead stern depopulation in her train, And over fields where scattered hamlets rose In barren solitary pomp repose? Have we not seen at pleasure's lordly call 405 The smiling long-frequented village fall? Beheld the duteous son, the sire decayed,[48] The modest matron, and the blushing maid, Forced from their homes, a melancholy train,[49] To traverse climes beyond the western main; 410 Where wild Oswego[50] spreads her swamps around, And Niagara[50] stuns with thund'ring sound? Even now, perhaps, as there some pilgrim strays Through tangled forests and through dangerous ways, Where beasts with man divided empire claim, 415 And the brown Indian marks with murderous aim; There, while above the giddy tempest flies, And all around distressful yells arise, The pensive exile, bending with his woe, To stop too fearful, and too faint to go, 420 Casts a long look where England's glories shine, And bids his bosom sympathize with mine. Vain, very vain, my weary search to find That bliss which only centers in the mind: Why have I strayed from pleasure and repose, 425 To seek a good each government bestows?[51] In every government, though terrors reign, Though tyrant kings or tyrant laws restrain, How small, of all that human hearts endure, That part which laws or kings can cause or cure; 430 Still to ourselves in every place consigned, Our own felicity we make or find: With secret course, which no loud storms annoy, Glides the smooth current of domestic joy. The lifted ax, the agonizing wheel, 435 Luke's iron crown,[52] and Damiens' bed of steel,[53] To men remote from power but rarely known, Leave reason, faith, and conscience all our own. NOTE.--Although many of the poet's statements are greatly exaggerated, _The Traveller_ is interesting because it contains beautiful descriptions and apt expressions of thought. The verse employed is the heroic couplet, the favorite verse of the eighteenth-century poets. The lines rhyme in pairs, and often a couplet expresses a complete thought. Each line contains five feet, or measures. [1.] Scheld. The Schelde, or Scheldt, empties into the North Sea near Antwerp. [2.] Carinthian boor. Carinthia is a province of Austria. [3.] Campania's plain. Campania includes, among other districts, the province of Naples.