The poetical works of Leigh Hunt :: :: University of Virginia Library

Dear Hazlitt, whose tact intellectual is such,
That it seems to feel truth, as pure matter of touch,—
Who in politics, arts, metaphysics, poetics,
To critics in these times, are health to cosmetics,
And, nevertheless, or I rather should say,
For that very reason,—can relish boy's play,

264

And turning on all sides, through pleasures and cares,
Find nothing more precious than laughs and fresh airs,—

One's life, I conceive, might go prettily down,
In a due easy mixture of country and town;—
Not after the fashion of most with two houses,
Who gossip, and gape, and just follow their spouses,
And let their abode be wherever it will,
Are the same vacant, house-keeping animals still;—
But with due sense of each, and of all that it yields,—
In the town, of the town,—in the fields, of the fields;—
In the one, for example, to feel as we go on,
That streets are about us, arts, people, and so on;
In t'other, to value the stillness, the breeze,
And love to see farms, and to get among trees.

Each his liking, of course,—so that this be the rule.—
For my part, who went in the city to school,
And whenever I got in a field, felt my soul in it
—Spring so, that like a young horse I could roll in it,—
My inclinations are much what they were,
And cannot dispense, in the first place, with air;
But then I would have the most rural of nooks
Just near enough town to make use of its books,
And to walk there, whenever I chose to make calls,
To look at the ladies, and lounge at the stalls.

To tell you the truth, I could spend very well
Whole mornings in this way 'twixt here and Pall Mall,
And make my gloves' fingers as black as my hat,
In pulling the books up from this stall and that:—
Then turning home gently through field and o'er style,
Partly reading a purchase, or rhyming the while,
Take my dinner (to make a long evening) at two,
With a few droppers-in, like my Cousin and you,
Who can season the talk with the right-flavour'd Attic,
Too witty, for tattling,—too wise, for dogmatic;—
Then take down an author, whom one of us mentions,
And doat, for a while, on his jokes or inventions;
Then have Mozart touch'd, on our bottle's completion,
Or one of your fav'rite trim ballads Venetian:—

265

Then up for a walk before tea down a valley,
And so to come back through a leafy-wall'd alley,
In which the sun peeping, as into a chamber,
Looks gold on the leaves, turning some to sheer amber:
Then tea made by one, who (although my wife she be,)
If Jove were to drink it, would soon be his Hebe;
Then silence a little,—a creeping twilight,—
Then an egg for your supper, with lettuces white,
And a moon and friend's arm to go home with at night.

Now this I call passing a few devout hours
Becoming a world that has friendships and flowers;
That has lips also, made for still more than to chat to;
And if it has rain, has a rainbow for that too.
“Lord bless us!” exclaims some old hunks in a shop,
“What useless young dogs!” and falls combing a crop.
“How idle!” another cries—“really a sin!”
And starting up, takes his first customer in.
“At least,” cries another, “it's nothing but pleasure;”
Then longs for the Monday, quite sick of his leisure.
“What toys!” cries the sage haggard statesman,—“what stuff!”
Then fillips his ribbon, to shake off the snuff.
“How profane!” cries the preacher, proclaiming his message;
Then calls God's creation a vile dirty passage.
“Lips too!” cries a vixen,—and fidgets, and stirs,
And concludes (which is true) that I didn't mean hers.