And prune the wild luxuriance of the tree; ... 
By him is made the sword, the spear, the shaft,
By Man worn to defend him against Man. 
  Most bless’d the country where kind Nature’s face
In unsophisticated Freedom smiles: 
Happy the tenants of primeval days
When young society is in it’s spring: 
Where there is room and food for millions more,
Love knows no check, the votaries of Love,
The happy votaries of Wedded Love,
Know not the curse of peopled, polish’d, times: 
The curse to wish their children may be few. 
  Sweet converse binds the cords of social love;
When the rude noise and gestures that ere while
Imperfectly express’d the labouring thought;
By social concourse are improv’d to Speech: 
Speech, reasoning Man’s distinguishing perfection;
Speech, the inestimable vehicle
Of mental light, and intellectual bliss;
Whence the fair fruits of Holy Friendship grow,
Presenting to fond Hope’s enamour’d sight
The fairy prospect of perpetual Peace. 
Advanc’d Society’s prudential Laws,
The moral virtues of the enlighten’d mind,
And all the ties of Interest and of Love,
In vain conspire to nurse their favourite Peace,
And banish dire Immanity and War. 
Strong Nature’s bent, continual increase,
Still counteracts Humanity’s fond wish,
The perpetuity of Peace, and Love;
Alas! progressive Increase cannot last. 
Soon mourns the encumber’d land it’s human load: 
Too soon arrives the inauspicious hour;
The Natal Hour of the unhappy Man,
Who all his life goes mourning up and down
That there is neither bough, nor mud, nor straw
That he may take to make himself a hut;
No, not in all his native land a twig
That he may take, nor spot of green grass turf,
Where without trespass he may set his foot. 
Now Want and Poverty wage War with Love;
And hard the conflict:  horrible the thought,
That Love, who boasts of his all-conquering impulse,
Should have to mourn abortive energies... 
But in proportion as Mankind increase,
So evils multiply:  till Nature’s self,
(The native passions of the human mind)
Engender War; which thins, and segregates,
And rectifies the balance of the world: 
As thick-sown plants in the vegetable world,
With stretching branches wage continual War;
Each tender bud shrinks from the foreign touch
With a degree of sensitive perception;
Till one deforms, o’er-tops, and kills the other. 
  Like Summer swarms, that quit their native hives,
The offspring of increasing families,
Who find no room beneath their father’s roofs,
No patrimony nor employ at home,
Colleagu’d in bands explore the desart wilds,
To seek adventures; or to seek their food: 
If chance they meet with rovers (like themselves)
Whose home is far away in distant vales,
Behind the mountains, or beyond the lake;
Instinctively they war where’er they meet: