I see thee weep, and thine are honest tears, A patriot’s for his country. Thou art sad At thought of her forlorn and abject state, From which no power of thine can raise her up. Thus fancy paints thee, and, though apt to err, Perhaps errs little when she paints thee thus. She tells me too that duly every morn Thou climb’st the mountain-top, with eager eye Exploring far and wide the watery waste, For sight of ship from England. Every speck Seen in the dim horizon turns thee pale With conflict of contending hopes and fears. But comes at last the dull and dusky eve, And sends thee to thy cabin, well prepared To dream all night of what the day denied. Alas, expect it not. We found no bait To tempt us in thy country. Doing good, Disinterested good, is not our trade. We travel far, ’tis true, but not for naught; And must be bribed to compass earth again By other hopes, and richer fruits than yours. But though true worth and virtue, in the mild And genial soil of cultivated life Thrive most, and may perhaps thrive only there, Yet not in cities oft. In proud and gay And gain-devoted cities, thither flow, As to a common and most noisome sewer, The dregs and feculence of every land. In cities, foul example on most minds Begets its likeness. Rank abundance breeds In gross and pampered cities sloth and lust, And wantonness and gluttonous excess. In cities, vice is hidden with most ease, Or seen with least reproach; and virtue, taught By frequent lapse, can hope no triumph there, Beyond the achievement of successful flight. I do confess them nurseries of the arts, In which they flourish most; where, in the beams Of warm encouragement, and in the eye Of public note, they reach their perfect size. Such London is, by taste and wealth proclaimed The fairest capital in all the world, By riot and incontinence the worst. There, touched by Reynolds, a dull blank becomes A lucid mirror, in which nature sees All her reflected features. Bacon there Gives more than female beauty to a stone, And Chatham’s eloquence to marble lips. Nor does the chisel occupy alone The powers of sculpture, but the style as much; Each province of her art her equal care. With nice incision of her guided steel She ploughs a brazen field, and clothes a soil So sterile with what charms soe’er she will, The richest scenery and the loveliest forms. Where finds philosophy her eagle eye, With which she gazes at yon burning disk Undazzled, and detects and counts his spots? In London. Where her implements exact, With which she calculates, computes, and scans All distance, motion, magnitude, and now Measures an atom, and now girds a world? In London. Where has commerce such a mart, So rich, so thronged, so drained, and so supplied, As London, opulent, enlarged, and still