您可以在百度里搜索“The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb — Volume 4 艾草文学(www.321553.xyz)”查找最新章节！

　　PINDARIC ODE TO THE TREAD MILL

　　(1825)

　　I

　　Inspire my spirit, Spirit of De Foe,

　　That sang the Pillory,

　　In loftier strains to show

　　A more sublime Machine

　　Than that, where them wert seen,

　　With neck out-stretcht and shoulders ill awry,

　　Courting coarse plaudits from vile crowds below—

　　A most unseemly show!

　　II

　　In such a place

　　Who could expose thy face,

　　Historiographer of deathless Crusoe!

　　That paint'st the strife

　　And all the naked ills of savage life,

　　Far above Rousseau?

　　Rather myself had stood

　　In that ignoble wood,

　　Bare to the mob, on holyday or high day.

　　If nought else could atone

　　For waggish libel,

　　I swear on bible,

　　I would have spared him for thy sake alone,

　　Man Friday!

　　III

　　Our ancestors' were sour days,

　　Great Master of Romance!

　　A milder doom had fallen to thy chance

　　In our days:

　　Thy sole assignment

　　Some solitary confinement,

　　(Not worth thy care a carrot,)

　　Where in world-hidden cell

　　Thou thy own Crusoe might have acted well,

　　Only without the parrot;

　　By sure experience taught to know,

　　Whether the qualms thou mak'st him feel were truly such or no.

　　IV

　　But stay! methinks in statelier measure—

　　A more companionable pleasure—

　　I see thy steps the mighty Tread Mill trace,

　　(The subject of my song

　　Delay'd however long,)

　　And some of thine own race,

　　To keep thee company, thou bring'st with thee along.

　　There with thee go,

　　Link'd in like sentence,

　　With regulated pace and footing slow,

　　Each old acquaintance,

　　Rogue—harlot—thief—that live to future ages;

　　Through many a labour'd tome,

　　Rankly embalm'd in thy too natural pages.

　　Faith, friend De Foe, thou art quite at home!

　　Not one of thy great offspring thou dost lack,

　　From pirate Singleton to pilfering Jack.

　　Here Flandrian Moll her brazen incest brags;

　　Vice-stript Roxana, penitent in rags,

　　There points to Amy, treading equal chimes,

　　The faithful handmaid to her faithless crimes.

　　V

　　Incompetent my song to raise

　　To its just height thy praise,

　　Great Mill!

　　That by thy motion proper

　　(No thanks to wind, or sail, or working rill)

　　Grinding that stubborn corn, the Human will,

　　Turn'st out men's consciences,

　　That were begrimed before, as clean and sweet

　　As flower from purest wheat,

　　Into thy hopper.

　　All reformation short of thee but nonsense is,

　　Or human, or divine.

　　VI

　　Compared with thee,

　　What are the labours of that Jumping Sect,

　　Which feeble laws connive at rather than respect?

　　Thou dost not bump,

　　Or jump,

　　But walk men into virtue; betwixt crime

　　And slow repentance giving breathing time,

　　And leisure to be good;

　　Instructing with discretion demi-reps

　　How to direct their steps.

　　VII

　　Thou best Philosopher made out of wood!

　　Not that which framed the tub,

　　Where sate the Cynic cub,

　　With nothing in his bosom sympathetic;

　　But from those groves derived, I deem,

　　Where Plato nursed his dream

　　Of immortality;

　　Seeing that clearly

　　Thy system all is merely

　　Peripatetic.

　　Thou to thy pupils dost such lessons give

　　Of how to live

　　With temperance, sobriety, morality,

　　(A new art,)

　　That from thy school, by force of virtuous deeds,

　　Each Tyro now proceeds

　　A "Walking Stewart!" The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb — Volume 4