An easy compensation seem to find.

Here may be seen, in bloodless pomp array’d,

The pasteboard triumph and the cavalcade;

Processions form’d for piety and love—

love—

A mistress or a saint in every grove:

By sports like these are all their cares beguil’d;

The sports of children satisfy the child.

Each nobler aim, repress’d by long control,

Now sinks at last, or feebly mans the soul;

While low delights, succeeding fast behind,

In happier meanness occupy the mind.

As in those domes, where Cæsars once bore sway,

Defac’d by time and tottering in decay,

There in the ruin, heedless of the dead,

The shelter-seeking peasant builds his shed;

And, wondering man could want the larger pile,

Exults, and owns his cottage with a smile.

My soul, turn from them, turn we to survey

Where rougher climes a nobler race display—

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