From obvious truths my Song has aim’d to shew
That War is an inevitable Ill;
An Ill through Nature’s various Realms diffus’d;
An Ill subservient to the General Good. 
  With sympathetic sense of human woes
Deeply impress’d, the melancholy Muse
With modesty asserts this mournful Truth: 
’Tis not in human wisdom to avert,
Though every feeling heart must sure lament,
The SAD NECESSITY of FATAL WAR.

* * * * *

ELEGY

ON THE ENCLOSURE OF HONINGTON GREEN.

[Motives of Enclosure.—­Natural Pleasures and humble Convenience lost by it.—­Recollections of the Spot....  The Mother.—­The Father.—­Character of his Mind.—­The Widow....  Maternal Cares.—­The Green....  It’s Beauties and Pleasures.—­The Enclosure in general less an object to the Poor.—­Under whatever Change the Man will adapt itself.—­The new Scene will find it’s Admirers.—­Pleasures are as the Mind and it’s Habits.]

* * * * *

1

  Improvement extends it’s domain;
    The Shepherds of Britain deplore
  That the Coulter has furrow’d each plain,
    And their calling is needful no more. 
  “Enclosing Land doubles its use;
    When cultur’d, the heath and the moor
  Will the Riches of Ceres produce,
    Yet feed as large flocks as before.”

2

  Such a lucrative maxim as this
    The Lords of the Land all pursue,
  For who such advantage wou’d miss? 
    Self-int’rest we all keep in view. 
  By it, they still more wealth amass,
    Who possess’d great abundance before;
  It gives pow’r to the Great, but alas! 
    Still poorer it renders the Poor.

3

  Taste spreads, her refinements around,
    Enriching her favourite Land
  With prospects of beautified ground,
    Where, cinctur’d, the spruce Villas stand;
  On the causeways, that never are foul,
    Marshal’d bands may with measur’d pace tread;
  The soft Car of Voluptuousness roll,
    And the proud Steed of Greatness parade.

4

  Those fenc’d ways that so even are made,
    The pedestrian traveler bemoans;
  He no more the green carpet may tread,
    But plod on, ’midst the gravel and stones: 
  And if he would rest with his load,
    No green hillock presents him a seat,
  But long, hard, tiresome sameness of road
    Fatigues both the eye and the feet.

5

  Sighs speak the poor Labourers’ pain,
    While the new mounds and fences they rear,
  Intersecting their dear native plain,
    To divide to each rich Man his share;
  It cannot but grieve them to see,
    Where so freely they rambled before,
  What a bare narrow track is left free
    To the foot of the unportion’d Poor.

6