The time has been when Nature’s simple face
Perennial youth possessed and winning grace;
But who shall dare, in this refining age,
With Nature’s praise to soil his snowy page? 
What polish’d lover, unappall’d by sneers
Dare court a beldame of six thousand years,
When every clown with microscopick eyes
The gaping furrows on her forehead spies?—­
’Good sir, your pardon:  In her naked state,
Her wither’d form we cannot chuse but hate;
But fashion’s art the waste of time repairs,
Each wrinkle fills, and dies her silver hairs;
Thus wrought anew, our gentle bosoms low;
We cannot chuse but love what’s comme il faut.’ 
Thy city Muse invoke, that imp of mind
By smoke engender’d on an eastern wind;
Then, half-awake, thy patent-thinking pen
The paper give, and blot the souls of men.

The time has been when Nature’s simple face
Perennial youth possessed and winning grace;
But who shall dare, in this refining age,
With Nature’s praise to soil his snowy page? 
What polish’d lover, unappall’d by sneers,
Dare court a beldame of six thousand years,
When every clown with microscopick eyes
The gaping furrows on her forehead spies?—­
’Good sir, your pardon:  In her naked state,
Her withered form we cannot chuse but hate;
But fashion’s art the waste of time repairs,
Each wrinkle fills, and dies her silver hairs;
Thus wrought anew, our gentle bosoms low;
We cannot chuse but love what’s comme il fauts.’

Alas, poor Cowper! could thy chasten’d eye,
(Awhile forgetful of thy joys on high)
Revisit earth, what indignation strange
Would sting thee to behold the courtly change! 
Here “velvet” lawns, there “plushy” woods that lave
Their “silken” tresses in the “glassy” wave;
Here “’broider’d” meads, there flow’ry “carpets” spread,
And “downy” banks to “pillow” Nature’s head;
How wouldst thou start to find thy native soil. 
Like birth-day belle, by gross mechanick toil
Trick’d out to charm with meretricious air,
As though all France and Manchester were there! 
But this were luxury, were bliss refin’d,
To view the alter’d region of the mind;
Where whim and mystery, like wizards, rule,
And conjure wisdom from the seeming fool;
Where learned heads, like old cremonas, boast
Their merit soundest that are cracked the most;
While Genius’ self, infected with the joke,
His person decks with Folly’s motley cloak.

Behold, loud-rattling like a thousand drums,
Eccentrick Hal, the child of Nature, comes! 
Of Nature once—­but now he acts a part,
And Hal is now the full grown boy of art. 
In youth’s pure spring his high impetuous soul
Nor custom own’d nor fashion’s vile control. 
By Truth impelled where beck’ning Nature led,
Through life he mov’d with firm elastic tread;
But soon the world, with wonder-teeming eyes,