from Canto VIII

61

Of all men, saving Sylla the Man-slayer,
     Who passes for in life and death most lucky,
Of the great names which in our faces stare,
     The General Boon, back-woodsman of Kentucky,
Was happiest amongst mortals any where;
     For killing nothing but a bear or buck, he
Enjoyed the lonely vigorous, harmless days
Of his old age in wilds of deepest maze.

62

Crime came not near him—she is not the child
     Of Solitude; health shrank not from him—for
Her home is in the rarely-trodden wild,
     Where if men seek her not, and death be more
Their choice than life, forgive them, as beguiled
     By habit to what their own hearts abhor—
In cities caged. The present case in point I
Cite is, that Boon lived hunting up to ninety;

63

And what’s still stranger, left behind a name
     For which men vainly decimate the throng,
Not only famous, but of that good fame,
     Without which Glory’s but a tavern song—
Simple, serene, the antipodes of shame,
     Which hate nor envy e’er could tinge with wrong;
An active hermit, even in age the child
Of Nature, or the Man of Ross run wild.

64

‘Tis true he shrank from men even of his nation,
     When they built up unto his darling trees,—
He moved some hundred miles off, for a station
     Where there were fewer houses and more ease;
The inconvenience of civilization
     Is, that you neither can be pleased nor please;
But where he met the individual man
He shewed himself as kind as mortal can.

65

He was not all alone: around him grew
     A sylvan tribe of children of the chace,
Whose young, unwakened world was ever new,
     Nor sword nor sorrow yet had left a trace
On her unwrinkled brow, nor could you view
     A frown on Nature’s or on human face;—
The free-born forest found and kept them free,
And fresh as is a torrent or a tree.

66

And tall and strong and swift of foot were they,
     Beyond the dwarfing city’s pale abortions,
Because their thoughts had never been the prey
     Of care or gain: the green woods were their portions;
No sinking Spirits told them they grew grey,
     No Fashion made them apes of her distortions;
Simple they were, not savage; and their rifles,
Though very true, were not yet used for trifles.

67

Motion was in their days, Rest in their slumbers,
    And Cheerfulness the handmaid of their toil;
Nor yet too many nor too few their numbers;
     Corruption could not make their hearts her soil;
The Lust which stings, the Splendour which encumbers,
     With the free foresters divide no spoil;
Serene, not sullen, were the solitudes
Of this unsighing people of the woods.

68

So much for Nature:—by way of variety,
     Now back to thy great joys, Civilization!
And the sweet consequence of large society,
     War, Pestilence, the despot’s desolation,
The kingly scourge, the Lust of Notoriety,
     The millions slain by soldiers for their ration,
The scenes like Catherine’s boudoir at three-score,
With Ismail’s storm to soften it the more.

69

The town was entered: first one column made
    Its sanguinary way good—then another;
The reeking bayonet and the flashing blade
    Clashed ‘gainst the scymitar, and babe and mother
With distant shrieks were heard Heaven to upbraid;—
    Still closer sulphury clouds began to smother
The breath of Morn and Man, where foot by foot
The maddened Turks their city still dispute.

70

Koutousow, he who afterwards beat back
     (With some assistance from the frost and snow)
Napoleon on his bold and bloody track,
     It happened was himself beat back just now:
He was a jolly fellow, and could crack
     His jest alike in face of friend or foe,
Though life, and death, and victory were at stake,
But here it seemed his jokes had ceased to take: