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Or when detected in their straggling course,To foil their foes by cunning or by force:Or yielding part (which equal knaves demand)To gain a lawless passport through the land. Here wand'ring long, amid these frowning fields,I sought the simple life that Nature yields;Rapine and Wrong and Fear usurp'd her place,And a bold, artful, surly, savage race;Who, only skill'd to take the finny tribe,The yearly dinner, or septennial bribe,Wait on the shore, and as the waves run high,On the tost vessel bend their eager eye;Which to their coast directs its vent'rous way,Their's or the ocean's miserable prey. As on their neighbouring beach yon swallows stand,And wait for favouring winds to leave the land;While still for flight the ready wing is spread:So waited I the favouring hour, and fled;Fled from these shores where guilt and famine reign,And cry'd. Ah! hapless they who still remain;Who still remain to hear the ocean roar,Whose greedy waves devour the lessening shore;Till some fierce tide, with more imperious sway,Sweeps the low hut and all it holds away;When the sad tenant weeps from door to door,And begs a poor protection from the poor. But these are scenes where Nature's niggard handGave a spare portion to the famish'd land;Her's is the fault, if here mankind complainOf fruitless toil and labour spent in vain;
