Forgive, Whang, this digressive strain; The journey done, I’m yours again. If for a simile I sought Back through the distant tracks of thought, The flowers I gather’d by the way Upon your fabled banks I lay; Where primrose groups were yearly seen Peeping beneath their curtain green, With aromatic mint beside, And violets in purple pride. In gay festoons, o’er hazles thrown, Hung many a woodbine’s floral crown; The brier-rose too, that woos the bee, And thyme, that sighs its odours free. The lark, the blackbird, and the thrush, Hymn’d happiness from every bush: The Eden to their lot assign’d Fill’d with content the feather’d kind; Example worthy _him_, I ween, Who reign’d sole monarch of the scene— The Miller.——“What!” you will enquire, “Possess’d he not his soul’s desire? Ah! could his wishes soar above The calm of this untroubled grove?” Alas! his frailty must be told— Whang entertain’d a love for gold: And none, whatever their demerit, That did of wealth a store inherit, But gain’d (so strong the dire dominion) Whang’s reverence, and his best opinion. “_Gold_, my dear spouse,” would cry his wife, “Is call’d an _evil_ of our life.” “True,” Whang rejoin’d, “the only _evil_ Whose visits I consider civil; But ’tis, alack!—the thought is grievous— _The evil_ most in haste to leave us.” ’Twere proper that my readers knew, That, by _degrees_, this passion grew; Not _always_ was the silly elf So craving, coveting of pelf, Though he was ever prone to hold In high esteem _pound-notes_ and _gold_: And CIRCUMSTANCES sometimes root Firm in the mind the _feeblest_ shoot; A truth, erewhile, this man of meal By his example will reveal.