Already, HIGHGATE! to thy skirts they bear
Bricks, mortar, timber, in no small degree,
And thy once pure, exhilarating air
Is growing pregnant with impurity!
The would-be merchant has his “country box”
A few short measures from the dusty road,
Where friends on Sunday talk about the stocks
Or praise the beauties of his “neat abode:”
One deems the wall-flow’r garden, in the front,
Unrivall’d for each aromatic bed;
Another fancies that his old sow’s grunt
“Is so much _like_ the country,” and instead
Of living longer down in Crooked-lane,
Resolves, at once, to “ruralize” again!