In all the glaring impotence of dress; Thus fares the land, by luxury betray'd, In nature's simplest charms at first array'd; {036} But verging to decline, its splendours rise, Its vistas strike, its palaces surprise; While, scourged by famine, from the smiling land The mournful peasant leads his humble band; And while he sinks, without one arm to save, The country blooms--a garden and a grave! Where then, ah! where shall poverty reside, To 'scape the pressure of contiguous pride? [Illustration: 0071] If to some common's fenceless limits stray'd, He drives his flock to pick the scanty blade, Those fenceless fields the sons of wealth divide, And e'en the bare-worn common is denied. {037} If to the city sped--What waits him there? To see profusion, that he must not share; To see ten thousand baneful arts combined To pamper luxury, and thin mankind; To see each joy the sons of pleasure know, Extorted from his fellow-creature's woe. [Illustration: 0074] Here, while the courtier glitters in brocade, There the pale artist plies the sickly trade; Here, while the proud their long-drawn pomp display, There the black gibbet glooms beside the way; {038} The dome where pleasure holds her midnight reign, Here, richly deck'd, admits the gorgeous train; Tumultuous grandeur crowds the blazing square, The rattling chariots clash, the torches glare. Sure scenes like these no troubles e'er annoy! Sure these denote one universal joy! Are these thy serious thoughts? Ah, turn thine eyes Where the poor houseless shivering female lies: She once, perhaps, in village plenty blest, Has wept at tales of innocence distrest; [Illustration: 0075] Her modest looks the cottage might adorn, Sweet as the primrose peeps beneath the thorn; {039} Now lost to all; her friends, her virtue fled, Near her betrayer's door she lays her head, And, pinch'd with cold, and shrinking from the shower, With heavy heart deplores that luckless hour When idly first, ambitious of the town, She left her wheel and robes of country brown. Do thine, sweet Auburn, thine, the loveliest train, Do thy fair tribes participate her pain? E'en now, perhaps, by cold and hunger led, At proud men's doors they ask a little bread! Ah, no. To distant climes, a dreary scene, Where half the convex world intrudes between, Through torrid tracts with fainting steps they go, Where wild Altama murmurs to their woe. Far different there from all that charm'd before, The various terrors of that horrid shore; Those blazing suns that dart a downward ray, And fiercely shed intolerable day; Those matted woods where birds forget to sing, But silent-bats in drowsy clusters cling; {040} Those poisonous fields with rank luxuriance crown'd, Where the dark scorpion gathers death around; Where at each step the stranger fears to wake The rattling terrors of the vengeful snake; [Illustration: 0079] Where crouching tigers wait their hapless prey,