Where wild Oswego spreads her swamps around,
And Niagara stuns with thundering sound?

E'en now, perhaps, as there some pilgrim strays Through tangled forests, and through dangerous ways; Where beasts with man divided empire claim,

And the brown Indian marks with murderous aim;
There, while above the giddy tempest flies,
And all around distressful yells arise,

The pensive exile, bending with his woe,

To stop too fearful, and too faint to go,
Casts a long look where England's glories shine,
And bids his bosom sympathize with mine.

Vain, very vain, my weary search to find
That bliss which only centres in the mind.
Why have I stray'd from pleasure and repose,
To seek a good each government bestows?
In every government, though terrors reign,
Though tyrant kings or tyrant laws restrain,
How small, of all that human hearts endure,
That part which laws or kings can cause or cure!
Still to ourselves in every place consign'd,

Our own felicity we make or find:

E'en now, perhaps, as there some pilgrim strays Through tangled forests, and through dangrous ways; Where beasts with man divided empire claim,.

The pensive exile, bending with his woe, To stop too fearful, and too faint to go.

Aug.1.1822.

With secret course, which no loud storms annoy,

Glides the smooth current of domestic joy.
The lifted axe, the agonizing wheel,

Luke's iron crown, and Damien's bed of steel,

To men remote from power but rarely known,
Leave reason, faith, and conscience all our own.

In the Respublica Hungarica there is an account of a desperate rebellion in the year 1514, headed by two brothers, George and Luke Zeck. When it was quelled, George, not Luke, was punished by his head being encircled with a red hot iron crown. Boswell pointed out Goldsmith's mistake.