.
Why Discontent for ever harbour'd there?
Incurable consumption of our peace! 30
Resolve me, why, the cottager, and king,
He, whom sea-sever'd realms obey, and he
Who steals his whole dominion from the waste,
Repelling winter blasts with mud and straw 34
Disquieted alike, draw sigh for sigh,
In fate so distant, in complaint so near?
Is it, that things terrestrial can't content?
Deep in rich pasture will thy flocks complain?
Not so; but to their master is denied
To share their sweet serene. Man, ill at ease,
In this, not his own place, this foreign field,
Where Nature fodders him with other food, 42
Than was ordain'd his cravings to suffice,
Poor in abundance, famish'd at a feast,
Sighs on for something more, when most enjoy'd.
Is Heaven, then, kinder to thy flocks than thee?
Not so; thy pasture richer, but remote;
In part, remote; for that remoter part
Man bleats from instinct, though perhaps, debauch'd
By sense, his reason sleeps, nor dreams the cause. 50
The cause how obvious, when his reason wakes!
His grief is but his grandeur in disguise;
And discontent is immortality.
Shall sons of ether, shall the blood of heaven,
Set up their hopes on earth, and stable here,
With brutal acquiescence in the mire?
Lorenzo, no! they shall be nobly pain'd;
The glorious foreigners, distress'd, shall sigh
On thrones; and thou congratulate the sigh:
Man's misery declares him born for bliss; 60
His anxious heart asserts the truth I sing,
And gives the sceptic in his head the lie.
Our heads, our hearts, our passions, and our powers,
Speak the same language; call us to the skies:
Unripen'd these in this inclement clime,
Scarce rise above conjecture, and mistake;
And for this land of trifles those too strong
Tumultuous rise, and tempest human life: 68
What prize on earth can pay us for the storm?
Meet objects for our passions Heaven ordain'd,
Objects that challenge all their fire, and leave
No fault, but in defect: bless'd Heaven! avert
A bounded ardour for unbounded bliss!
O for a bliss unbounded! Far beneath
A soul immortal, is a mortal joy.
Nor are our powers to perish immature;
But, after feeble effort here, beneath
A brighter sun, and in a nobler soil,
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