With curious art the brain, too finely wrought,
Preys on herself, and is destroyed by thought.

UNITED

ITED yet divided, twain at once.

Song.

So sit two kings of Brentford on one throne.*

Nor rural sights alone, but rural sounds

Book i. The Sofa.

Exhilarate the spirit, and restore

The tone of languid Nature.

Ibid.

The earth was made so various, that the mind

Of desultory man, studious of change,

And pleased with novelty, might be indulged.

Ibid.

*Two Kings of Brentford, from Buckingham's play of the Rehearsal.

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

O for a lodge in some vast wilderness,
Some boundless contiguity of shade,
Where rumour of oppression and deceit,
Of unsuccessful or successful war,

Might never reach me more.†

Book ii.

The Timepiece.

Mountains interposed

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

I would not have a slave to till my ground,
To carry me, to fan me while I sleep,
And tremble when I wake, for all the wealth
That sinews bought and sold have ever earned.

Slaves cannot breathe in England; if their lungs
Receive our air, that moment they are free;

Ibid.

Ibid.

They touch our country and their shackles fall.‡ Ibid.

England, with all thy faults I love thee still,

Oh that I had in the wilderness a lodging-place of wayfaring men.Jeremiah ix. 2.

↑ Servi peregrini, ut primum Galliæ fines penetraverint eodem momento liberi sunt.-BODINUS. Liber i. c. 5.

§ Be England what she will,

With all her faults she is my country still.

CHURCHILL.

The Farewell.

To zigzag manuscript, and cheats the eyes
Of gallery critics by a thousand arts.

Book ii. The Timepiece.

Praise enough

To fill the ambition of a private man,

That Chatham's language was his mother-tongue.

And with a well-bred whisper close the scene.

Ibid.

Domestic Happiness, thou only bliss

Of Paradise that hast survived the fall!

Ibid.

*He has spent all his life in letting down empty buckets into empty wells; and he is frittering away his age in trying to draw them up again.' -Memoirs of Sydney Smith.

How various his employments whom the world
Calls idle; and who justly in return

Esteems that busy world an idler too!

Book iii.

Who loves a garden loves a greenhouse too.

The Garden.

Ibid.

I burn to set the imprisoned wranglers free,
And give them voice and utterance once again.
Book iv. Winter Evening.

Now stir the fire, and close the shutters fast,
Let fall the curtains, wheel the sofa round,
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.

And Katerfelto, with his hair on end

At his own wonders, wondering for his bread.

'Tis pleasant, through the loopholes of retreat,

Ibid.

To peep at such a world; to see the stir
Of the great Babel, and not feel the crowd.

Ibid.

While fancy, like the finger of a clock,
Runs the great circuit, and is still at home.

O Winter, ruler of the inverted year.

With spots quadrangular of diamond form,
Ensanguined hearts, clubs typical of strife,
And spades, the emblem of untimely graves.

Ibid.

Ibid.

Ibid.

* [Tar-water] is of a nature so mild and benign and proportioned to the human constitution, as to warm without heating, to cheer but not inebriate.-BISHOP BERKELEY. Siris, par. 217.

Sidney, warbler of poetic prose. Book iv. Winter Evening.

The Frenchman's darling.*

But war's a game which, were their subjects wise,

Kings would not play at.

The beggarly last doit.

Ibid.

Book v. Winter Morning Walk.

With filial confidence inspired,

Ibid.

Can lift to Heaven an unpresumptuous eye,
And smiling say, 'My Father made them all !'

Ibid.

As dreadful as the Manichean god,

Adored through fear, strong only to destroy.

Ibid.

He is the freeman whom the truth makes free.

Ibid.

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.
How soft the music of those village bells,
Falling at intervals upon the ear

Book vi. Winter Walk at Noon.

In cadence sweet.

Here the heart

May give a useful lesson to the head,

And Learning wiser grow without his books.

Ibid.

*'T was Cowper who gave this now common name to the Mignonette.