| |
TURN me to survey | |
| Where rougher climes a nobler race display, | |
| Where the bleak Swiss their stormy mansion tread, | |
| And force a churlish soil for scanty bread: | |
| No product here the barren hills afford | 5 |
| But man and steel, the soldier and his sword; | |
| No vernal blooms their torpid rocks array, | |
| But winter lingering chills the lap of May; | |
| No zephyr fondly sues the mountain’s breast, | |
| But meteors glare, and stormy glooms invest. | 10 |
| |
| Yet still, even here, content can spread a charm, | |
| Redress the clime, and all its rage disarm. | |
| Though poor the peasant’s hut, his feast though small, | |
| He sees his little lot the lot of all; | |
| Sees no contiguous palace rear its head, | 15 |
| To shame the meanness of his humble shed; | |
| No costly lord the sumptuous banquet deal | |
| To make him loathe his vegetable meal; | |
| But calm, and bred in ignorance and toil, | |
| Each wish contracting, fits him to the soil. | 20 |
| Cheerful at morn he wakes from short repose, | |
| Breathes the keen air, and carols as he goes; | |
| With patient angle trolls the finny deep, | |
| Or drives his venturous ploughshare to the steep; | |
| Or seeks the den where snow-tracks mark the way, | 25 |
| And drags the struggling savage into day. | |
| At night returning, every labor sped, | |
| He sits him down the monarch of a shed; | |
| Smiles by a cheerful fire, and round surveys | |
| His children’s looks that brighten to the blaze, | 30 |
| While his loved partner, boastful of her hoard, | |
| Displays her cleanly platter on the board; | |
| And haply too some pilgrim, thither led, | |
| With many a tale repays the nightly bed. | |
| |
| Thus every good his native wilds impart, | 35 |
| Imprints the patriot lesson on his heart; | |
| And e’en those ills that round his mansion rise, | |
| Enhance the bliss his scanty fund supplies. | |
| Dear is that shed to which his soul conforms, | |
| And dear that hill that lifts him to the storms; | 40 |
| And as a child, when scaring sounds molest, | |
| Clings close and closer to the mother’s breast, | |
| So the loud torrent and the whirlwind’s roar | |
| But bind him to his native mountains more. | |
| |
