arments lowly,
Alike a Foe to noisy folly,
And brow-bent gloomy melancholy
I wear away
My life, and in my office holy
Consume the day.

Content and comfort bless me more in
This Grot, than e'er I felt before in
A Palace, and with thoughts still soaring
To God on high,
Each night and morn with voice imploring
This wish I sigh.

'Let me, Oh! Lord! from life retire,
Unknown each guilty worldly fire,
Remorseful throb, or loose desire;
And when I die,
Let me in this belief expire,
"To God I fly"!'

Stranger, if full of youth and riot
As yet no grief has marred thy quiet,
Thou haply throw'st a scornful eye at
The Hermit's prayer:
But if Thou hast a cause to sigh at
Thy fault, or care;

If Thou hast known false Love's vexation,
Or hast been exil'd from thy Nation,
Or guilt affrights thy contemplation,
And makes thee pine,
Oh! how must Thou lament thy station,
And envy mine!

'Were it possible' said the Friar, 'for Man to be so totally wrapped up
in himself as to live in absolute seclusion from human nature, and
could yet feel the contented tranquillity which these lines express, I
allow that the situation would be more desirable, than to live in a
world so pregnant with every vice and every folly. But this never can
be the case. This inscription was merely placed here for the ornament
of the Grotto, and the sentiments and the Hermit are equally imaginary.
Man was born for society. However little He may be attached to the
World, He never can wholly forget it, or bear to be wholly forgotten by
it. Disgusted at the guilt or absurdity of Mankind, the Misanthrope
flies from it: He resolves to become an Hermit, and buries himself in
the Cavern of some gloomy Rock. While Hate inflames his bosom,
possibly He may feel contented with his situation: But when his
passions begin to cool; when Time has mellowed his sorrows, and healed
those wounds which He bore with him to his solitude, think you that
Content becomes his Companion? Ah! no, Rosario. No longer sustained
by the violence of his passions, He feels all the monotony of his way
of living, and his heart becomes the prey of Ennui and weariness. He
looks round, and finds himself alone in the Universe: The love of
society revives in his bosom, and He pants to return to that world
which He has abandoned. Nature loses all her charms in his eyes: No
one is near him t