The Virginia Gazette

POET'S CORNER.

The MISANTHROPE'S SOLILOQUY.

All friendly shades! sequester'd groves and woods!
Far from th' abhor'd society of man,
And woman too, impertinence and noise!
To you I fly, in silence undistrub'd,
To pour my plaintive moan, give thoughts a vent,
Embriol'd in storm, and swell'd with high disdain;
To ease the tumult of my heaving breast,
And give the big o'erflowing heart relief.
What does this world afford, this idol world,
For which both old and young alike run mad?
To which in prostrate adoration bow
The rich, the poor, the monarch, and the slave;
The vain, the gay,—no wonder: But with these
The men deem'd wise, the grave and the devout,
How ALL go down the stream of human vanity,
On frolicks bent, by foolish custom aw'd!
O! in what wild infatuating dreams
Are mankind lost! in what deep error plung'd!
How vain the all they think, the all they say,
The all they do!—My heart detests the whole.
What here is worth a thought? What can deserve
Th' attention of a Rational an hour?
Men are but children of a larger growth;
Things full as trifling do their thoughts employ
I see them grasping at the fleeting shadows,
Which, like the gaudy rainbow, mock the touch:
I see them sporting with th'air blown bubbles,
And build their hopes like castles in the air,
Which every little rising puff o'erthrows.
O how I sicken at this empty world,
Where misery and disappointment reign;
Where wickedness, internal, takes the mask
Of heavenly virtue,—sincerity unknown;
Where still some serpent nestles in the rose,
Religion is hypocrisy,—virtue deceit;
Justice self-interest, friendship but a name,
And kindness nought but hollow-hearted flattery.

Appamattox, Jan. 22, 1776.
F.