"Alas! (you cry) that is not all:
"My former friendships I recall,
"My house, my farm, my days, my nights,
"Scenes vanish'd now, and past delights."—
Distance for absence you mistake—
Here, days and nights their circuits make:
Here, Nature walks her beauteous round,
And friendship may—perhaps—be found.
If times grow dark, or wealth retires,
Let Reason check your proud desires:
Virtue the humblest garb can wear,
And loss of wealth is loss of care.
Thus half unwilling, half resign'd,
Desponding, why, the generous mind?—
Think right,—nor be the hour delayed
That flies the sun, to seek the shade.
Though injured, exiled, or alone,
Nobly presume the world your own,
Convinced that, since the world began,
Time, only, makes The Banish'd Man.
[40] Published in the Daily Advertiser, September 1, 1790, with the introduction: "A little before Lord Bolingbroke was banished into France, he wrote an essay upon Exile.—Some of his thoughts on that occasion are expressed in the following Stanzas." Text from the 1809 edition.
THE DEPARTURE[41]
Occasioned by the Removal of Congress from New-York to Philadelphia.—[1790.]
From Hudson's banks, in proud array,
(Too mean to claim a longer stay)
Their new ideas to improve,
Behold the generous Congress move!