THE FOREST BEAU[86]
[A Picture from Reality]
When first to feel Love's fire Jack Straw begins,
He combs his hair, and cocks his hat with pins,
Views in some stream, his face, with fond regard,
Plucks from his upper lip the bristly beard,
With soap and sand his homely visage scours
(Rough from the joint attacks of sun and showers)
The sheepskin breeches decorate his thighs—
Next on his back the homespun coat he tries;
Round his broad breast he wraps the jerkin blue,
And sews a spacious soal on either shoe.
Thus, all prepared, the fond adoring swain
Cuts from his groves of pine a ponderous cane;
In thought a beau, a savage to the eye,
Forth, from his mighty bosom, heaves the sigh;
Tobacco is the present for his fair,
This he admires, and this best pleases her—
The bargain struck,—few cares his bosom move
How to maintain, or how to lodge his love;
Close at his hand the piny forest grows,
Thence for his hut a slender frame he hews,
With art, (not copied from Palladio's rules,)
A hammer and an axe, his only tools,
By Nature taught, a hasty hut he forms
Safe in the woods, to shelter from the storms;—
There sees the summer pass and winter come,
Nor envies Britain's king his loftier home.
[86] From the edition of 1809. First published, as far as I can discover, in 1795.
EPISTLE[87]
To a Student of Dead Languages
I pity him, who, at no small expense,
Has studied sound instead of sense:
He, proud some antique gibberish to attain;
Of Hebrew, Greek, or Latin, vain,
Devours the husk, and leaves the grain.
In his own language Homer writ and read,
Nor spent his life in poring on the dead:
Why then your native language not pursue
In which all ancient sense (that's worth review)
Glows in translation, fresh and new?
He better plans, who things, not words, attends,
And turns his studious hours to active ends;
Who Art through every secret maze explores,
Invents, contrives—and Nature's hidden stores
From mirrours, to their object true,
Presents to man's obstructed view,
That dimly meets the light, and faintly soars:—