IN London I never know what I’d be at,
Enraptured with this, and enchanted with that;
I’m wild with the sweets of variety’s plan,
And Life seems a blessing too happy for man.
But the Country, Lord help me! sets all matters right;
So calm and composing from morning to night;
Oh! it settles the spirits when nothing is seen
But an ass on a common, a goose on a green.
In town if it rain, why it damps not our hope,
The eye has her choice, and the fancy her scope
What harm though it pour whole nights or whole days?
It spoils not our prospects, or stops not our ways.
In the country what bliss, when it rains in the fields,
To live on the transports that shuttlecock yields;
Or go crawling from window to window, to see
A pig on a dung-hill, or crow on a tree.
In London if folks ill together are put,
A bow may be dropt, and a quiz may be cut;
We change without end; and if lazy or ill,
All wants are at hand, and all wishes at will.
In the country you’re nail’d, like a pale in the park,
To some stick of a neighbour that’s cramm’d in the ark;
And ’tis odds, if you’re hurt, or in fits tumble down,
You reach death ere the doctor can reach you from town.
In London how easy we visit and meet,
Gay pleasure’s the theme, and sweet smiles are our treat;
Our morning’s a round of good-humoured delight,
And we rattle, in comfort, to pleasure at night.
In the country, how sprightly! our visits we make
Through ten miles of mud, for Formality’s sake;
With the coachman in drink, and the moon in a fog,
And no thought in our head but a ditch or a bog.
In London the spirits are cheerful and light,
All places are gay and all faces are bright;
We’ve ever new joys, and revived by each whim,
Each day on a fresh tide of pleasure we swim.
But how gay in the country! what summer delight
To be waiting for winter from morning to night!
Then the fret of impatience gives exquisite glee
To relish the sweet rural subjects we see.
In town we’ve no use for the skies overhead,
For when the sun rises then we go to bed;
And as to that old-fashion’d virgin the moon;
She shines out of season, like satin in June.
In the country these planets delightfully glare
Just to show us the object we want isn’t there;
O, how cheering and gay, when their beauties arise,
To sit and gaze round with the tears in one’s eyes!
But ’tis in the country alone we can find
That happy resource, that relief of the mind,
When, drove to despair, our last efforts we make,
And drag the old fish-pond, for novelty’s sake:
Indeed, I must own, tis a pleasure complete
To see ladies well draggled and wet in their feet;
But what is all that to the transport we feel
When we capture, in triumph, two toads and an eel?
I have heard tho’, that love in a cottage is sweet,
When two hearts in one link of soft sympathy meet:
That’s to come—for as yet I, alas! am a swain
Who require, I own it, more links to my chain.
Your magpies and stock-doves may flirt among trees,
And chatter their transports in groves, if they please:
But a house is much more to my taste than a tree,
And for groves, O! a good grove of chimneys for me.
In the country, if Cupid should find a man out,
The poor tortured victim mopes hopeless about;
But in London, thank Heaven! our peace is secure,
Where for one eye to kill, there’s a thousand to cure.
I know love’s a devil, too subtle to spy,
That shoots through the soul, from the beam of an eye;
But in London these devils so quick fly about,
That a new devil still drives an old devil out.
In town let me live then, in town let me die,
For in truth I can’t relish the country, not I.
If one must have a villa in summer to dwell,
O, give me the sweet shady side of Pall Mall!
Charles Morris.