To shun destructive sloth, which oft hath brought
Its slaves to want, to vice, disease and wo,
And all the num'rous evils mortals know;
She comes to drain the kine; industrious she,
Domestic work to ply; with heartfelt glee,
She treads her native snow, she cheerly sings
Her simple rural strains, and with her brings
Her ample pails, pure as contiguous snow,
Which soon with copious streams of milk o'erflow.
Now, laden with the luscious spoil, she trips,
And, as she treads incautious, often slips:
The peasant too, returns in jocund mood;
His herds, well housed, enjoy their sav'ry food;
From cold and hunger free, they there abide,
Nor aught of comfort wish or know, beside.

But oft, devoid of such a friendly shield,
To savage winter's ruthless grasp they yield;
The fleecy flocks are buried oft in snow,
And undiscover'd breathe in depths below;
The anxious shepherd seeks his charge in vain,
And rambles joyless o'er the desert plain;
But if he chance to find the smother'd race,
Their breath, that thaws the snow, denotes the place;
The lengthy hook he gladly then suspends,
By this the suff'rer, scarce alive, ascends;

While those remain whom death the power denies
To make the snow-dissolving breath arise.
By hunger urged, the nimble-footed deer

O'er snow-crown'd heights pursues his swift career;
The hapless brute by huntsmen's toils annoy'd,
Oft meets the fate he labors to avoid;

A vale, replete with snow, betrays his steps,
Incautious in the fatal depth he leaps;

In vain he struggles now himself to clear,

And panting, dreading, sees his foes draw near;

They come, they wound, they slay the guiltless beast;

Already fancy riots at the feast;

Big tears hang trembling in his dying eyes,

Unmoved they hear the captive's piteous cries,

Exulting, grapple their expiring prey,
And, loud rejoicing, bear the prize away.
Nor yet contented with the lusty prize,
Insatiate man to meaner conquests flies:
He skirts the forest, and he beats the copse,
The hare and squirrel now invite his hopes:
In hollow trees, and burrows under ground,
28

VOL. I.

He careful pries, and looks expectant round.
If now the parent hare hath left her haunt,
In quest of sustenance her offspring want,
The helpless young, in man's deep arts unskill'd,
To his perfidious stratagem must yield:
The dam, improvident of winter's store,
Now dubious roams abroad in search of more;
And, spurr'd by pressing want, the snow disturbs,
To glean precarious food from wither'd herbs;
But deadly guns her anxious search cut short,
Or traps insidious lie where game resort;
Or, if she shun these snares, a harder fate,
Severer evils her return await:

Her haunt she enters, but the hapless hare
Beholds nor mate, nor harmless offspring there,
And dies with cold, with hunger and despair.

The fowler too the meads and woods explores;
With his remorseless feats the country roars;
With cautious step, and big with hope and fear,
He pauses now, and now approaches near,
And eyes the feather'd flock through all their flight,
Till on some tempting meadow they alight,
Within his reach; then points, with steady hand,
The fatal engine to the heedless band;

Swift from the tube escapes the leaden death,
That lays them prostrate, gasping out their breath;
While others, startled at the ruthless deed,
Precipitate and wild, forsake the mead;
But many, flying, meet the death they shun,
And swifter ruin leaves the murd❜rous gun;
Through yielding air it flies, with thund'ring sound,
And hurls its conquest on the blood-stain'd ground!
On skates of wood the sons of Lapland go,
To hunt the elk o'er endless tracts of snow,
Nor heed the cavities which lurk below:
Upon the snow-topp'd surface far and wide,
Accoutred for the chase, they fearless slide;
The huntsman, fleet and fierce as winter's wind,
Each moment leaves a length'ning space behind;
Mad with desire his object he pursues,
Too late the beast his luckless fortune rues;
The sanguine foe, with horizontal aim,
Darts instantaneous ruin to the game;
Dextrous he manages the missile bow,
That lays his victim's branching antlers low;
The deathful weapon cuts th' aerial space,
And crowns the triumph of the savage chase!

323

TO A VIOLET.

THOUGH not the gaudy Tulip's drap'ry fine,
Yet thou, fair plant, canst Tyre's rich purple boast;
The beauty of the Amethyst is thine;

Thy neat and simple garb delights me most;
Unseen and shadowy forms, of tiny size,
Delicious dew-drops from thy surface sip,
Feast on thy charms their microscopic eyes,

And breathe thy sweets, as o'er thy leaves they trip.
Emblem of innocence and modest worth,
Who lov'st the eye of rude remark to shun,
Whose lovely, lowly form still tends to earth,
Unlike the flower which courts the mid-day sun;
Thou seem'st, sweet flow'ret, of his beam afraid ;—
Thus merit ever loves and seeks the shade.

TO A SEGAR.

SWEET antidote to sorrow, toil and strife,
Charm against discontent and wrinkled care.
Who knows thy power can never know despair;
Who knows thee not, one solace lacks of life:
When cares oppress, or when the busy day
Gives place to tranquil eve, a single puff
Can drive even want and lassitude away,
And give a mourner happiness enough.
From thee when curling clouds of incense rise,
They hide each evil that in prospect lies;
But when in evanescence fades thy smoke,

Ah! what, dear sedative, my cares shall smother?
If thou evaporate, the charm is broke,

Till I, departing taper, light another.

TO THE GENIUS OF POETRY.

GENIUS of tuneful verse! inspired by whom,
Divine Mæonides in numbers first

Dawn'd on a world o'ercast with mental gloom,

And strains sublime to barb'rous Greece rehearsed;

Spirit of song! from whose Castalian fount
The Mantuan poet sweet instruction drew;
With piercing ken to whose Aonian mount,
Once Albion's bards on eagle pinions flew;
Though far aloof thy vot'ry stretch his wing,
That o'er no classic land presumes to soar,
Him hast thou taught in plaintive strains to sing,
To feel thy solace, and thy power adore;
And, spite of envy's futile venom, thou
Hast placed a leaf of laurel on his brow.

BENJAMIN PRATT

Was born in Massachusetts in 1710, and graduated at Harvard College in 1737. He was for some time a lawyer in Boston, and became distinguished also as a politician, but though attached to the cause of freedom, he became obnoxious to the people by his exertions in favor of Governor Pownall. He was appointed Chief Justice of New York, and filled that office with ability and reputation. He projected a history of New England, and made a large collection of materials, but the work was arrested by his death, January 5th, 1763. The following lines were found among his papers.

DEATH.

THOUGH guilt and folly tremble o'er the grave,
No life can charm, no death affright the brave.
The wise at nature's laws will ne'er repine,
Nor think to scan or mend the grand design
That takes unbounded nature for its care,
Bids all her millions claim an equal share.
Late in a microscopic worm confined,
Then in a prison'd fetus drown'd the mind;
Now of the ape kind both for sense and size,

Man eats and drinks and propagates and dies.
Good God! if thus to live our errand here,
Is parting with life's trifles worth our fear?
Or what grim furies have us in their power,
More in the dying than the living hour.
Ills from ourselves, but none from nature flow,
And virtue's road cannot descend to wo.
What nature gives, receive, her laws obey;
If you must die tomorrow, live today.

The prior states thy mind has varied through
Are drown'd in Lethe where black waves pursue,
To roll oblivion o'er each yesterday,

And will tomorrow sweep thyself away.

But where? no more unknown in future fate
Than your own end or essence in this state.
The past, the future and our nature hid,
Now comic and now tragic scenes we tread.
Unconscious actors: with a drama run
And act a part, but for a plot unknown.
We see their shapes, we feel ten thousand things,
We reason, act and sport on fancy's wings,
While yet this agent, this percipient lies
Hid from itself and puzzles all the wise.
In vain we seek, inverted eyes are blind,
And nature form'd no mirror for the mind.

Like some close cell whence art excludes the day,
Save what through optics darts its pencil'd ray,
And paints the lively landscape to the sight,
While yet the room itself is veil'd in night.
Nor can you find with all your boasted art,
The curious touch that bids the salient heart
Send its warm purple round the venal maze,
To fill each nerve with life, with bloom the face.
How o'er the heart the numbing palsies creep
To chill the carcase to eternal sleep.

'Tis ours t' improve this life, not ours to know
From whence this meteor, when or where 't will go.
As o'er a fen when heaven 's involved in night,
An ignis fatuus waves its new-born light,
Now up, now down, the mimic taper plays
As varying Auster puffs the trembling blaze;
Soon the light phantom spends its magic store,
Dies into darkness, and is seen ro more.
Thus run our changes, but in this secure,
Heaven trusts no mortal's fortune in his power.
Nor hears the prayers impertinent we send