flail

And merrily, with oft-repeated stroke,

Sounds from the threshing-floor the busy flail.

Fall and rustle and are still;

Beats no flail upon the sheaves,

Comes no murmur from the mill.

On him alone the curse of Cain

Fell, like a flail on the garnered grain,

And struck him to the earth!

To knaw the unfinished bone; the placid cow

Looks oer the gate; the thresher's lumping flail

Is all the noise the spring encounters now.

That in this pile should reign a mighty prince,

Born for a scourge of wit, and flail of sense:

To whom true dullness should some Psyches owe,

I will not rant, I will not rail;

For good the grain must feel the flail;

There are whom love has never blessed.

Tell, in what realms thou sport'st thy merry night,

Trail'st the long mop, or whirl'st the mimic flail.

Where dost thou deck the much-disordered hall,

of trees, the wilderness, the grove, and the sound of the thresher's

flail then suggests to him that all live by energy, best ease is after

toil. He compares the luxury of art with wholesomeness of Nature free