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(From The Traveller)
MY soul, turn from them; turn we to survey | |
| Where rougher climes a nobler race display, | |
| Where the bleak Swiss their stormy mansion tread, | |
| And force a churlish soil for scanty bread. | |
| No product here the barren hills afford, | 5 |
| But man and steel, the soldier and his sword. | |
| No vernal blooms their torpid rocks array, | |
| But winter, lingering, chills the lap of May; | |
| No zephyr fondly sues the mountain’s breast, | |
| But meteors glare and stormy glooms invest. | 10 |
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| Yet still, e’en here, content can spread a charm, | |
| Redress the clime, and all its rage disarm. | |
| Though poor the peasant’s hut, his feasts though small, | |
| He sees his little lot the lot of all; | |
| Sees no contiguous palace rear its head | 15 |
| To shame the meanness of his humble shed; | |
| No costly lord the sumptuous banquet deal | |
| To make him loathe his vegetable meal; | |
| But calm, and bred in ignorance and toil, | |
| Each wish contracting, fits him to the soil. | 20 |
| Cheerful at morn, he wakes from short repose, | |
| Breathes the keen air, and carols as he goes; | |
| With patient angle trolls the finny deep, | |
| Or drives his venturous ploughshare to the steep; | |
| Or seeks the den where snow-tracks mark the way, | 25 |
| And drags the struggling savage into day. | |
| At night returning, every labor sped, | |
| He sits him down the monarch of a shed: | |
| Smiles by his cheerful fire, and round surveys, | |
| His children’s looks, that brighten at the blaze; | 30 |
| While his loved partner, boastful of her hoard, | |
| Displays her cleanly platter on the board; | |
| And haply too some pilgrim thither led, | |
| With many a tale repays the nightly bed. | |
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| Thus every good his native wilds impart | 35 |
| Imprints the patriot passion on his heart; | |
| And e’en those ills that round his mansion rise | |
| Enhance the bliss his scanty funds supplies. | |
| Dear is that shed to which his soul conforms, | |
| And dear that hill which lifts him to the storms; | 40 |
| And as a child, when scaring sounds molest, | |
| Clings close and closer to the mother’s breast, | |
| So the loud torrent and the whirlwind’s roar | |
| But bind him to his native mountains more. | |
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