But that of idleness, and taste no scenes
But such as art contrives, possess ye still
Your element; there only can ye shine;
There only minds like your's can do no harm.
Our groves were planted to console at noon
The pensive wand'rer in their shades. At eve
The moon-beam, sliding softly in between
The sleeping leaves, is all the light they wish,
Birds warbling all the music. We can spare
The splendour of your lamps; they but eclipse
Our softer satellite. Your songs confound

Our more harmonious notes: the thrush departs
Scar'd, and th' offended nightingale is mute.
There is a public mischief in your mirth;

It plagues your country. Folly such as your's, Grac'd with a sword, and worthier of a fan,

Has made, what enemies could ne'er have done, Our arch of empire, stedfast but for

you,

A mutilated structure, soon to fall.

THE TASK.

BOOK II.

ARGUMENT OF THE SECOND BOOK.

Reflections suggested by the conclusion of the former book.-Peace among the nations recommended, on the ground of their common fellowship in sorrow. -Prodigies enumerated.- Sicilian earthquakes.— Man rendered obnoxious to these calamities by sin. -God the agent in them. The philosophy that stops at secondary causes reproved.-Our own late miscarriages accounted for.-Satirical notice taken of our trips to Fontainbleau.—But the pulpit, not satire, the proper engine of reformation.-The Reverend Advertiser of engraved sermons.-Petitmaitre parson.-The good preacher.—Pictures of a theatrical clerical coxcomb.-Story-tellers and jesters in the pulpit reproved.-Apostrophe to popular applause.-Retailers of ancient philosophy expostulated with.-Sum of the whole matter.-Effects of sacerdotal mismanagement on the laity.-Their folly and extravagance.-The mischiefs of profusion.Profusion itself, with all its consequent evils, ascribed, as to its principal cause, to the want of discipline in the universities.

THE TASK.

BOOK II.

THE TIME-PIECE.

Оn 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. My ear is pain'd,
My soul is sick, with ev'ry day's report

Of

wrong and outrage with which earth is fill'd. There is no flefh in man's obdurate heart, It does not feel for man; the natʼral bond

Of brotherhood is sever'd as the flax

That falls asunder at the touch of fire.

He finds his fellow guilty of a skin

Not colour'd like his own; and, having pow'r