Classic Poem

I see it not——where is the sylvan scene?
A fabric, tender, flexile, moist, and green?
Whose sweetly pointless lines and blander dies
Nourish, with mild regale, the suited eyes?
Lo! all around is rigid, dry, and brown!
Unfruitfulness in state! a pomp of stone!
Where verdure, loveliest work of Light, should bloom,
Flowers deck the ground and breathe the chaste perfume,
Broad steril walks their dusty plain expand,
In all the majesty of size and sand!
Where frolic trees should wave their pliant boughs,
Unbending statues sleep in lifeless rows.
Each fairer, freer work of Nature, here,
Spoil'd of its freedom, is no longer fair.
Hard rules the cramp'd, uneasy forms confine,
Nor leave the punish'd eye one lawless line:
No stroke enlarg'd from rigorous order strays;
No part appears that wantons and that plays:
Grandeur, grave Power, restricts the scene around,
Checks all its smiles, and prims the solemn ground.
Imperial Might hath toil'd, with vast expence,
To give the tortur'd sight complete offence;
To bid a labour'd blank of grace appear,
Superbly pleasureless, and trimly drear!

True taste precluding, how should boastful Pride
E'er learn the lovely art, her art to hide?
Her only aim is all her art to show;
Or who her garden's wond'rous cost could know?
Unanxious to adorn the scene by stealth,
No wit she uses, all she spends is wealth.
Studious her ample treasures to reveal,
Nature alone she labours to conceal.
Each native bent to beauty Nature shows,
Instant she crosses, eager to oppose:
Thee, Nature, thee, the vulgar awe to raise,
Perverse, she thwarts in all thy graceful ways!
The free-made waters, her abhorr'd control
Shuts up in basons, and forbids to roll;
Or toss'd in air, with harsh, tyrannic force,
Their stream pursues a strange distorted course;
As flame spires upward, her fantastic fount
Compels the cadent element to mount;
Like sparks toward heaven, the drops aspiring fly,
And upright currents shoot into the sky!

The joyless eye, with fruitless longing, roves
O'er the stiff grounds, for lines which Nature loves,
Where is her careless, sweetly devious way,
Where Pleasure's followers long delight to stray?
To emulate the city's straightest street,
Shap'd to assist the haste of busy feet,
The lengthen'd rule is levell'd to define
Each rigid walk's long rectitude of line.

Lo! the shorn woods no rich luxuriance wear,
Lopp'd of their shade, to form a sylvan square!
No easy swells, without, the sense delight;
With sharpest edge each corner wounds the sight:
The paths, within, in answering angles made,
Conduct thro' galleries of level shade;
Whose even leaves their wainscot-plain display,
And their green ceiling's flat defence from day:
All seems the work, so set is every part,
Not of the gard'ner's, but the mason's art.

If from right lines the formal scenery swerve,
'Tis ne'er in easy Beauty's wanton curve:
When suffer'd thence to rove, the slavish line,
Thro' all its course, the compasses confine;
Round rolls the stroke with mathematic care,
All centre-bound, exactly circular:
No sportive way it takes, at large and free,
No gambol plays of freakful liberty,
But all constrain'd, with strict precision errs,
And, to the point from whence it sallied, steers.
So pris'ners, when allow'd a while to stray,
A jealous follower watches all the way;
In a small round their straiten'd footsteps move,
And as they rest, in custody they rove;
A little hour the captive wanderers roam,
Then back to jail again dejected come.

That power despotic hath obey'd no bound,
Is all I note in all this vaunted ground.
Lo! with the lovely forms of right and fair
How comprehensive is its impious war!
The human scene could not alone contain
The o'erflowing rage of its unrighteous reign;
E'en thy green kingdom, Nature, it invades,
And sways a tyrant-scepter o'er the shades:
The murd'rous knife, with rural sweets at war,
Relentless hath refus'd one charm to spare:
I hear the Genius moan, as round I rove,
Of each methodically wounded grove;
And to the peasant's wail, and prisoner's sigh,
The bleeding Dryad joins her plaining cry.
No Graces here in sprightly measures move,
Their fetter'd feet oppose the dance they love:
Oppressive Art erects her iron throne,
And injur'd Nature mourns her freedom gone.