Part 73 (1/2)

Society is all but rude To this delicious solitude.

3 No white nor red was ever seen So amorous as this lovely green.

Fond lovers, cruel as their flame, Cut in these trees their mistress' name.

Little, alas, they know or heed, How far these beauties her exceed!

Fair trees! where'er your barks I wound, No name shall but your own be found.

4 What wondrous life in this I lead!

Ripe apples drop about my head.

The luscious cl.u.s.ters of the vine Upon my mouth do crush their wine.

The nectarine, and curious peach, Into my hands themselves do reach.

Stumbling on melons as I pa.s.s, Ensnared with flowers, I fall on gra.s.s.

5 Meanwhile the mind from pleasure less Withdraws into its happiness.

The mind, that ocean where each kind Does straight its own resemblance find; Yet it creates, transcending these, Far other worlds and other seas; Annihilating all that's made To a green thought in a green shade.

6 Here at the fountain's sliding foot, Or at some fruit-tree's mossy root, Casting the body's vest aside, My soul into the boughs does glide; There, like a bird, it sits and sings, Then whets and claps its silver wings, And, till prepared for longer flight, Waves in its plumes the various light.

7 Such was the happy garden state, While man there walked without a mate: After a place so pure and sweet, What other help could yet be meet!

But 'twas beyond a mortal's share To wander solitary there: Two paradises are in one, To live in paradise alone.

8 How well the skilful gard'ner drew Of flowers and herbs this dial new!

Where, from above, the milder sun Does through a fragrant zodiac run: And, as it works, the industrious bee Computes its time as well as we.

How could such sweet and wholesome hours Be reckoned but with herbs and flowers?

SATIRE ON HOLLAND.

Holland, that scarce deserves the name of land, As but the offscouring of the British sand; And so much earth as was contributed By English pilots when they heaved the lead; Or what by the ocean's slow alluvion fell, Of s.h.i.+pwrecked c.o.c.kle and the mussel-sh.e.l.l; This indigested vomit of the sea Fell to the Dutch by just propriety.

Glad then, as miners who have found the ore, They, with mad labour, fished the land to sh.o.r.e: And dived as desperately for each piece Of earth, as if't had been of ambergris; Collecting anxiously small loads of clay, Less than what building swallows bear away; Or than those pills which sordid beetles roll, Transfusing into them their dunghill soul.

How did they rivet, with gigantic piles, Thorough the centre their new-catched miles; And to the stake a struggling country bound, Where barking waves still bait the forced ground; Building their watery Babel far more high To reach the sea, than those to scale the sky.

Yet still his claim the injured Ocean laid, And oft at leap-frog o'er their steeples played; As if on purpose it on land had come To show them what's their _mare liberum_.

A daily deluge over them does boil; The earth and water play at level-coil.

The fish oft-times the burgher dispossessed, And sat, not as a meat, but as a guest; And oft the Tritons, and the sea-nymphs, saw Whole shoals of Dutch served up for Cabillau; Or, as they over the new level ranged, For pickled herring, pickled heeren changed.

Nature, it seemed, ashamed of her mistake, Would throw their land away at duck and drake, Therefore necessity, that first made kings, Something like government among them brings.

For, as with Pigmies, who best kills the crane, Among the hungry he that treasures grain, Among the blind the one-eyed blinkard reigns, So rules among the drowned he that drains.

Not who first see the rising sun commands, But who could first discern the rising lands.

Who best could know to pump an earth so leak, Him they their lord, and country's father, speak.

To make a bank was a great plot of state; Invent a shovel, and be a magistrate.

Hence some small dikegrave unperceived invades The power, and grows, as 'twere, a king of spades; But, for less envy some joined states endures, Who look like a commission of the sewers: For these half-anders, half-wet and half-dry, Nor bear strict service, nor pure liberty.

'Tis probable religion, after this, Came next in order; which they could not miss.