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Contrast, The

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 dunghill or crow on a tree.

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-fashioned 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;

Oh, 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, the 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 though, 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.

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.

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,

Oh, give me the sweet shady side of Pall Mall!