The Task — Continued.

God made the country, and man made the town.*

Book ii. The Timepiece.
O for a lodge in some vast wilderness,
Some boundless contiguity of shade,
Where rumor of oppression and deceit,
Of unsuccessful or successful war,
Might never reach me more.

Mountains interposed
Make enemies of nations, who had else,
Like kindred drops, been mingled into one.

England, with all thy faults, I love thee still —
My countryof

Praise enough To fill the ambition of a private man, That Chatham's language was his mother tongue.

There is a pleasure in poetic pains
Which only poets know.

Variety's the very spice of life,
That gives it all its flavor.

The Task — Continued.

She that asks Her dear five hundred friends.

Book iii. The Garden.
Domestic Happiness, thou only bliss
Of Paradise that hast survived the fall!

Great contest follows, and much learned dust.

From reveries so airy, from the toil
Of dropping buckets into empty wells,
And growing old in drawing nothing up.

How various his employments whom the world
Calls idle; and who justly in return
Esteems that busy world an idler too!

Book iv. Winter Evening. And while the bubbling and loud hissing urn Throws up a steamy column, and the cups, That cheer but not inebriate, wait on each, So let us welcome peaceful evening in.

'T is pleasant, through the loopholes of retreat,
To peep at such a world; to see the stir
Of the great Babel, and not feel the crowd.

Book v. Winter Morning Walk. But war 's a game which, were their subjects wise, Kings would not play at.

The Task — Continued.

He is the freeman whom the truth makes free.

Book vi. Winter Walk at Noon.
There is in souls a sympathy with sounds;
And as the mind is pitched, the ear is pleased
With melting airs, or martial, brisk, or grave;
Some chord in unison with what we hear
Is touched within us, and the heart replies.

Here the heart
May give a useful lesson to the head,
And Learning wiser grow without his books.

I would not on my list of friends

(Though graced with polished manners and fine sense,

Yet wanting sensibility) the man

Who needlessly sets foot upon a worm.

Tirocinium.
Shine by the side of every path we tread
With such a lustre, he that runs may read.

Retirement.
Built God a church, and laughed His word to scorn.

How sweet, how passing sweet is solitude!
But grant me still a friend in my retreat,
Whom I may whisper, Solitude is sweet.

Conversation.
A fool must now and then be right, by chance.

John Gilpin.
That, though on pleasure she was bent,
She had a frugal mind.

A hat not much the worse for wear.

Lines to his Mother's Picture. O that those lips had language! Life has passed With me but roughly since I heard thee last.

Walking with God. What peaceful hours I once enjoyed!

How sweet their memory still! Bu t they have left an aching void,

The world can never fill.

VERSES,
Supposed to be Written by Alexander Selkirk.
I am monarch of all I survey,

My right there is none to dispute.

O Solitude! where are the charms
That sages have seen in thy face?

But the sound of the church-going bell
Those valleys and rocks never heard,

Never sighed at the sound of a knell,
Or smiled when a Sabbath appeared.

How fleet is a glance of the mind 1
Compared with the speed of its flight,

The tempest itself lags behind,

And the swift-winged arrows of light.

Observing some names of little note.
There goes the parson, oh illustrious spark!
And there, scarce less illustrious, goes the clerk!

A Fable. (Moral.)
'Tis Providence alone secures
In every change both mine and yours.

Friendship.
The man that hails you Tom or Jack,
And proves by thumps upon your back

How he esteems your merit,
Is such a friend that one had need
Be very much his friend indeed

To pardon or to bear it.

The Needless Alarm. (Moral.) Beware of desperate steps. The darkest day, Live till to-morrow, will have passed away.

The Jackdaw.
He sees that this great roundabout,
The world, with all its motley rout,

Church, army, physic, law,
Its customs and its businesses,
Is no concern at all of his,

And says — what says he ? — Caw.