Vain, very vain, my weary search to find
That bliss which only centers in the mind:
Why have I strayed from pleasure and repose, 425
To seek a good each government bestows?[51]
In every government, though terrors reign,
Though tyrant kings or tyrant laws restrain,
How small, of all that human hearts endure,
That part which laws or kings can cause or cure; 430
Still to ourselves in every place consigned,
Our own felicity we make or find:
With secret course, which no loud storms annoy,
Glides the smooth current of domestic joy.
The lifted ax, the agonizing wheel, 435
Luke's iron crown,[52] and Damiens' bed of steel,[53]
To men remote from power but rarely known,
Leave reason, faith, and conscience all our own.
NOTE.--Although many of the poet's statements are greatly exaggerated,
_The Traveller_ is interesting because it contains beautiful
descriptions and apt expressions of thought. The verse employed is the
heroic couplet, the favorite verse of the eighteenth-century poets.
The lines rhyme in pairs, and often a couplet expresses a complete
thought. Each line contains five feet, or measures.
[1.
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