Thro’ the still air bewitching spirits glide,
And spread the sorcery of Christmastide!
Must I awake to find these visions flown,
The past long dead, and happiness unknown?
Have honest merriment and rural cheer
Gone with the fleeting snows of yesteryear?
Unhappy age! whose joys so ill contrast
With the spontaneous pleasures of the past;
Wherein our languid youth to gloom resort,
And listless children must be taught their sport:
Whose arts the stamp of waning pow’r confess,
And hide their weakness in eccentric dress;
Canst thou not see thy many woes proceed
From false ambition, commerce, haste, and greed?
Wise is the man who spurns the seething times,
Nor madly up the hill of Plutus climbs;
Rests on his own hereditary soil
Remote from care or avaricious broil;
His father’s place assumes, and keeps his name
On the calm records of agrestic fame.
For such an one the field of learning waits,
And art attends his hospitable gates;
’Tis his to feed the flame of sense and wit,
And ancient lore to future times transmit;
Preserve the good his grandsires prov’d before,
And drive the wolf of dulness from the door;
Each Gothic novelty with skill attack,
And bring the grace of former ages back.
Ye hoary groves! whose many-centuried oaks
The wistful bard with longing lyre invokes,
Look down once more in your imperial state
On such a race as made Old England great!
View once again the hearty rural Squire
Whose lib’ral soul contain’d a gen’rous fire;
Whose mild dominion sway’d the peasant band,
And spread contentment thro’ the grateful land:
Such, and such only, can the past revive;
And keep our well-lov’d Christmas joys alive;
Meanwhile the Muse, in reminiscent strain,
Forgets the years, and sings those joys again!
New England Fallen
Hic, ubi nocturnae Numa constituebat amicae,
Nunc sacri fontis nemus et delubra locantur
Judaeis, quorum cophinus faenunique supellex;
Omnis enim populo mercedem peudere jussa est
Arbor, et ejectis mendicat silva Camenis.
Juvenal, iii, 12–16.
