stafford Gregoire's List: research jacobs

sight of people

midst of people

’Tis pleasant through the loopholes of retreat
 To peep at such a world; to see the stir
 Of the great Babel and not feel the crowd;
 To hear the roar she sends through all her gates
 At a safe distance, where the dying sound
 Falls a soft murmur on the uninjured ear.
 Thus sitting and surveying thus at ease
 The globe and its concerns, I seem advanced
 To some secure and more than mortal height,
 That liberates and exempts me from them all.
 It turns submitted to my view, turns round
 With all its generations; I behold
 The tumult and am still.  The sound of war
 Has lost its terrors ere it reaches me;
 Grieves, but alarms me not.  I mourn the pride
 And avarice that makes man a wolf to man;
 Hear the faint echo of those brazen throats
 By which he speaks the language of his heart,
 And sigh, but never tremble at the sound.
 He travels and expatiates, as the bee
 From flower to flower so he from land to land;
 The manners, customs, policy of all
 Pay contribution to the store he gleans,
 He sucks intelligence in every clime,
 And spreads the honey of his deep research
 At his return—a rich repast for me.
 He travels and I too.  I tread his deck,
 Ascend his topmast, through his peering eyes
 Discover countries, with a kindred heart
 Suffer his woes and share in his escapes;
 While fancy, like the finger of a clock,
 Runs the great circuit, and is still at home.