There only minds like your's can do no harm.
Our groves were planted to console at noon
The pensive wand'rer in their fhades. At eve
The moon-beam, niding softly in between
The sleeping leaves, is all the light they wish,
Birds warbling all the music. We can spare
The splendour of your lamps; they but eclipfe
Our softer satellite. Your songs confound
Our more harmonious notes: the thrush departs
Scar'd, and th' offended nightingale is mute.
There is a public mischief in your mirth;
It plagues your country. Folly such as your's,
Grac'd with a sword, and worthier of a fan,
Has made, what enemies could ne'er have done,
Our arch of empire, stedfast but for you,
A mutilated structure, foon to fall,

THE TASK.

BOOK II.

CS

ARGUMENT OF THE SECOND BOOK.

Reflections Suggested by the conclusion of the former book. Peace among the nations recon

commended, on the ground of their common

on fellowship in forrow.- Prodigies enumerated. Sicilian earthquakes.--Man rendered obnoxious to these calamities by fin.—God the agent in tbem.-The philoSophy that fops at secondary causes reproved.–Our own late miscarriages accounted for.-Satirical notice taken of our trips to Fontainbleau.—But the pulpit, not satirar the proper engine of reformation.-The Reverend Advercifer of engraved sermons.--Petit-maitre parfon.— The good preacher.---Pictures of a theatrical clerical coxcomb. -Story-tellers and jifters in the pulpit reproved.--ApoStropke to popular applause.—Retailers of ancient pbiloSopby expoftulated with.-Sum of the whole matter. Effects of Jarcedotal mismanagement on the laity.--Tbeir folly and extravagance. —The mischiefs of profufion.Profufion itself, with all its consequent evils, ascribed, as to its principal cause, to the want of discipline in the universities,

THE TASK.

BOOK II.

THE TIME-PIECE.

Oh for a lodge in some vaft wilderness,
Some boundless contiguity of shade,
Where rumour of oppression and deceit,
Of unsuccessful or successful war,
Might never reach me more. My ear is pain’d,
My soul is fick, with every day's report
Of wrong and outrage with which earth is fill?d. :
There is no flesh in man's obdurate heart,
It does not feel for man; the pat'ral bond
Of brotherhood is fever'd as the flax-
That falls asunder at the touch of fire.
He finds his fellow guilty of a skin
Not colour'd like his own; and, having pow'r

T'enforce the wrong, for such a worthy cause
Dooms and devotes him as his lawful prey.
Lands intersected by a narrow frith
Abhor each other. Mountains interpos*d
Make enemies of nations, who had else,
Like kindred drops, been mingled into one.
Thus man devotes his brother, and destroys;
And, worse than all, and most to be deplorid,
As human nature's broadest, foulest blot,
Chains him, and tasks him, and exacts his sweat
With stripes, that mercy, with a bleeding heart,
Weeps when she sees inflicted on a beast.
Then what is man? And what man, seeing this,
And having human feelings, does not blush,
And hang his head, to think himself a man?
I would not have a Dave to till my ground,
To carry me, to fan me while I Neep,
And tremble when I wake, for all the wealth
That finews bought and sold have ever earn'd.
No: dear as freedom is, and in my heart's.
Just estimation priz'd above all price,
I had much rather be myself the slave,
And wear the bonds, than fasten them on him.
We have no slaves at home-Then why abroad
And they themselves once ferried o'er the wave
That parts us, are emancipate and loos'do