Attach'd to lands that ne'er deceiv'd his hopes, This rustic sees the seasons come and go, His autumn's toils return'd in summer's crops, While limpid streams, to cool his herbage, flow;
And, if some cares intrude upon his mind, They are such cares as heaven for man design'd. He to no pompous dome comes, cap in hand, Where new-made‘ squires affect the courtly smile:
Nor where Pomposo,‘ midst his foreign band Extols the sway of kings, in swelling style, With tongue that babbled when it should have hush'd, A head that never thought — a face that never blush'd.
He on no party hangs his hopes or fears, Nor seeks the vote that baseness must procure; No stall-fed Mammon, for his gold, reveres, No splendid offers from his chests allure.
While showers descend, and suns their beams display, The same, to him, if Congress go or stay. He at no levees watches for a glance, ( Slave to disgusting, distant forms and modes )
Heeds not the herd at Bufo's midnight dance, Dullman's mean rhymes, or Shylock's birth-day odes: Follies, like these, he deems beneath his care, And Titles leaves for simpletons to wear.
Where wandering brooks from mountain sources roll, He seeks at noon the waters of the shade, Drinks deep, and fears no poison in the bowl That Nature for her happiest children made:
And from whose clear and gently-passing wave All drink alike — the master and the slave. The scheming statesman shuns his homely door, Who, on the miseries of his country fed,
Ne'er glanc'd his eye from that base pilfer'd store To view the sword, suspended by a thread — Nor that “hand-writing,” grav'd upon the wall, That tells him — but in vain — “the sword must fall.”
He ne'er was made a holiday machine, Wheel'd here and there by‘ squires in livery clad, Nor dreads the sons of legislation keen, Hard-hearted laws, and penalties most sad —
In humble hope his little fields were sown, A trifle, in your eye — but all his own.
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