But through all Nature’s constancy
An awful change of form is seen,
Two forms are not which quite agree,
None is replaced that once hath been;
Endless variety in all,
From Fly to Man, Creation’s pride,
Each shows his proper form—to fall
Eftsoons in time’s o’erwhelming tide,
And mutability goes on
With ceaseless combination.
’Tis thine to teach with magic power
Those who still bend life’s fragile stem,
To suck the sweets of every flower,
Before the sun shall set to them;
Calm the contending passions dire,
Which on thy surface I descry,
Like water struggling with the fire
In combat, which of them shall die;
Thus is the soul in Fury’s car,
A type of Hell’s intestine war.
Old wall of man’s most noble par,
While now I trace with trembling hand
Thy sentiments, how oft I start,
Dismay’d at such a jarring band!
Man, with discordant frenzy fraught,
Seems either madman, fool, or knave;
To try to live is all he’s taught—
To ’scape her foot who nought doth save
In life’s proud race;—(unknown our goal)
To strive against a kindred soul.
These various organs show the place
Where Friendship lov’d, where Passion glow’d,
Where Veneration grew in grace,
Where justice swayed, where man was proud—
Whence Wit its slippery sallies threw
On Vanity, thereby defeated;
Where Hope’s imaginary view
Of things to come (fond fool) is seated;
Where Circumspection made us fear,
Mid gleams of joy some danger near.
Here fair Benevolence doth grow
In forehead high—here Imitation
Adorns the stage, where on the Brow
Are Sound, and Color’s legislation.
Here doth Appropriation try,
By help of Secrecy, to gain
A store of wealth, against we die,
For heirs to dissipate again.
Cause and Comparison here show,
The use of every thing we know.
But here that fiend of fiends doth dwell,
While Ideality unshaken
By facts or theory, whose spell
Maddens the soul and fires our beacon.
Whom memory tortures, love deludes,
Whom circumspection fills with dread,
On every organ he obtrudes,
Until Destruction o’er his head
Impends; then mad with luckless strife,
He volunteers the loss of life.
And canst thou teach to future man
The way his evils to repair—
Say, O momento,—of the span
Of mortal life? For if the care
Of truth to science be not given,
(From whom no treachery it can sever,)
There’s no dependance under heaven
That error may not reign for ever.
May future heads more learning cull
From thee, when my own head’s a skull.
There is a parish game in Scotland, at this season of the year, when the waters are frozen and can bear practitioners in the diversion. It prevails, likewise, in Northumberland, and other northern parts of south Britain; yet, nowhere, perhaps, is it so federalized as among the descendants of those who “ha’ wi’ Wallace bled.” This sport, called curling, is described by the georgical poet, and will be better apprehended by being related in his numbers: it being premised that the time agreed on, or the appointment for playing it, is called the tryst; the match is called the bonspiel; the boundary marks for the play are called the tees; and the stones used are called coits, or quoits, or coiting, or quoiting-stones.
Now rival parishes, and shrievedoms, keep,
On upland lochs, the long-expected tryst
To play their yearly bonspiel. Aged men,
Smit with the eagerness of youth, are there,
While love of conquest lights their beamless eyes,
New-nerves their arms, and makes them young once more.