How oft upon yon eminence our pace
  Has slackened to a pause, and we have borne
  The ruffling wind, scarce conscious that it blew,
  While admiration feeding at the eye,
  And still unsated, dwelt upon the scene. 
  Thence with what pleasure have we just discerned
  The distant plough slow moving, and beside
  His labouring team, that swerved not from the track,
  The sturdy swain diminished to a boy. 
  Here Ouse, slow winding through a level plain
  Of spacious meads with cattle sprinkled o’er,
  Conducts the eye along his sinuous course
  Delighted.  There, fast rooted in their bank,
  Stand, never overlooked, our favourite elms,
  That screen the herdsman’s solitary hut;
  While far beyond, and overthwart the stream,
  That, as with molten glass, inlays the vale,
  The sloping land recedes into the clouds;
  Displaying on its varied side the grace
  Of hedge-row beauties numberless, square tower,
  Tall spire, from which the sound of cheerful bells
  Just undulates upon the listening ear;
  Groves, heaths, and smoking villages remote. 
  Scenes must be beautiful which, daily viewed,
  Please daily, and whose novelty survives
  Long knowledge and the scrutiny of years: 
  Praise justly due to those that I describe.

  [MAN’S INHUMANITY]

  Oh for a lodge in some vast wilderness,
  Some boundless contiguity of shade,
  Where rumour of oppression and deceit,
  Of unsuccessful or successful war,
  Might never reach me more!  My ear is pained,
  My soul is sick, with every day’s report
  Of wrong and outrage with which earth is filled. 
  There is no flesh in man’s obdurate heart,
  It does not feel for man; the natural bond
  Of brotherhood is severed as the flax
  That falls asunder at the touch of fire. 
  He finds his fellow guilty of a skin

  Not coloured like his own, and, having power
  T’ enforce the wrong, for such a worthy cause
  Dooms and devotes him as his lawful prey,
  Lands intersected by a narrow frith. 
  Abhor each other.  Mountains interposed
  Make enemies of nations who had else
  Like kindred drops been mingled into one. 
  Thus man devotes his brother, and destroys;
  And worse than all, and most to be deplored,
  As human nature’s broadest, foulest blot,
  Chains him, and tasks him, and exacts his sweat
  With stripes that Mercy, with a bleeding heart,
  Weeps when she sees inflicted on a beast. 
  Then what is man?  And what man seeing this,
  And having human feelings, does not blush
  And hang his head, to think himself a man? 
  I would not have a slave to till my ground,
  To carry me, to fan me while I sleep,
  And tremble when I wake, for all the wealth
  That sinews bought and sold have ever earned. 
  No:  dear as freedom is, and in my heart’s
  Just estimation prized above all price,