William Stanley Braithwaite, ed. The Book of Georgian Verse. 1909.
In a HermitageWilliam Whitehead (17151785)
T
In Nature’s calm enjoyments pass’d,
Will want no monitors, like these,
To torture and alarm his last.
The zealot’s list of rigid rules,
To him are merely dull parade,
The tragic pageantry of fools.
When Nature calls, resigns his breath;
Nor age in weak repining wastes,
Nor acts alive the farce of death.
Impatient of each kind restraint
Which parent Nature fix’d, in vain,
To teach us man’s true bliss, content.
With eager impotence they strive,
’Till appetite has learn’d to loathe
The very joys by which we live.
To disappointed vice can add,
Tir’d of himself, man flies from man,
And hates the world he made so bad.