Thither no more the peasant shall repair
To sweet oblivion of his daily care;
No more the farmer's news, the barber's tale,
No more the woodman's ballad shall prevail;
No more the smith his dusky brow shall clear,
Relax his ponderous strength, and learn to hear;
The host himself no longer shall be found
Careful to see the mantling bliss go round;
Nor the coy maid, half willing to be pressed,
Shall kiss the cup to pass it to the rest.
9. Yes! let the rich deride, the proud disdain,
These simple blessings of the lowly train;
To me more dear, congenial to my heart,
One native charm than all the gloss of art;
Spontaneous joys, where nature has its play,
The soul adopts, and owns their first-born sway;
Lightly they frolic o'er the vacant mind,
Unenvied, unmolested, unconfined.
But the long pomp, the midnight masquerade,
With all the freaks of wanton wealth arrayed,
In these, ere triflers half their wish obtain,
The toiling pleasure sickens into pain ;
And e'en while fashion's brightest arts decoy,
The heart, distrusting, asks if this be joy.
49. THE DESERTED VILLAGE.
E friends to truth, ye statesmen, who survey
The rich man's joys increase, the poor's decay, yours to judge how wide the limits stand Between a splendid and a happy land.
Proud swells the tide with loads of freighted ore,
And shouting Folly hails them from her shōre;
Hoards e'en beyond the miser's wish abound,
And rich men flock from all the world around.
Yet count our gains. This wealth is but a name,
That leaves our useful products still the same.
The man of wealth and pride
that many poor supplied;
Space for his lake, his park's extended bounds,
Space for his horses, eq'uipage, and hounds;
The robe that wraps his limbs in silken slōth
Has robbed the neighboring fields of half their growth ;
His seat, where solitary sports are seen,
Indignant spurns the cottage from the green;
Around the world each needful product flies,
For all the luxuries the world supplies,
While thus the land, adorned for pleasuro all,
In barren splendor feebly waits the fall.
2. As some fair female, unadorned and plain,
Secure to please while youth confirms her reign,
Slights every borrowed charm that dress supplies,
Nor shares with art the triumph of her eyes;
But when those charms are past-for charms are frail-
When time advances, and when lovers fail,
She then shines fōrth, solicitous to bless,
In all the glaring impotence of dress;-
Thus fares the land by luxury betrayed,
In nature's simplèst charms at first arrayed;
But, verging to decline, its splendors rise,
Its vistas strike, its palaces surprise;
While, scourged by famine from the smiling land,
The mournful peasant leads his humble band;
And while he sinks, without one arm to save,
The country blooms-a garden and a grave.
3. Where, then, ah! where shall Poverty reside,
To escape the pressure of contiguous Pride?
If to some common's fencelèss limits strayed,
He drives his flock to pick the scanty blade,
Those fenceless fields the sons of wealth divide,
And e'en the bare-worn common is denied.
If to the city sped-what waits him there?
To see profusion that he must not share ;
To see ten thousand baneful arts combined
To pamper luxury and thin mankind;
To see each joy the sons of Pleasure know
Extorted from his fellow-creature's woe.
Here, while the courtier glitters in brocade,
There, the pale artist plies the sickly trade;
Here, while the proud their long-drawn pomp display,
There, the black gibbet glooms beside the way;
The dome where Pleasure holds her midnight reign,
Here, richly decked, admits the gorgeous train ;
Tumultuous Grandeur crowds the blazing square,
The rattling chariots clash, the torches glare.
4. Sure scenes like these no troubles e'er annoy!
Sure these denote one universal joy!
Are these thy serious thoughts?-Ah! turn thine eyes
Where the poor, houseless, shivering female lies:
She once, perhaps, in village plenty blessed,
Has wept at tales of innocence distrest;
Her modèst looks the cottage might adorn,
Sweet as the primrose peeps beneath the thorn ;
Now lost to all, her friends, her virtue fled,
Near her betrayer's door she lays her head,
And, pinched with cold, and shrinking from the shower, With heavy heart deplores that luckless hour,
When idly first, ambitious of the town,
She left her wheel and robes of country brown.
5. Do thine, sweet Auburn, thine, the loveliest train,
Do thy fair tribes participate her pain?
E'en now, perhaps, by cold and hunger led,
At proud men's doors they ask a little bread!
Ah, no. To distant climes, a dreary scene,
Where half the convex world intrudes between,
Through torrid tracts with fainting steps they go,
Where wild Altama murmurs to their woe.
Far different there from all that charmed befōre,
The various terrors of that horrid shōre ;
Those blazing suns that dart a downward ray,
And fiercely shed intolerable day;
Those matted woods where birds forget to sing,
But silent bats in drowsy clusters cling;
Those poisonous fields with rank luxuriance crowned,
Where the dark scorpion gathers death around:
Where at each step the stranger fears to wake
The rattling terrors of the vengeful snake;
Where crouching tigers wait their hapless prey,
And savage men, mōre murderous still than they;
While oft in whirls the mad tornado flies,
Mingling the ravaged landscape with the skies.
6. Far different these from every former scene,-
The cooling brook, the grassy-vested green,
The breezy covert of the warbling grove,
That only sheltered thefts of harmless love.
Good Heaven! what sorrows gloomed that parting day
That called them from their native walks away;
When the poor exiles, every pleasure past,
Hung round the bowers, and fondly looked their last,
And took a long farewell, and wished in vain
For seats like these beyond the western main;
And shuddering still to face the distant deep,
Returned and wept, and still returned to weep!
7. The good old sire the first prepared to go
To new-found worlds, and wept for others' woe;
But for himself, in conscious virtue brave,
He only wished for worlds beyond the grave.
His lovely daughter, lovelier in her tears,
The fond companion of his helpless years,
Silent went next, neglectful of her charms,
And left a lover's for her father's arms.
With louder plaints the mother spoke her woes,
And blessed the cot where every pleasure rose ;
And kissed her thoughtless babes with many a tear,
And clasped them close, in sorrow doubly dear;
While her fond husband strove to lend relief,
In all the silent manliness of grief.
8. Oh, Luxury! thou cursed by Heaven's decree,
How ill-exchanged are things like these for thee!
How do thy pōtions, with insidious joy,
Diffuse their pleasures only to destroy!
Kingdoms by thee to sickly greatness grown,
Boast of a florid vigor not their own.
At every draught more large and large they grow,
A bloated mass of rank, unwieldy woe;
Till, sapped their strength, and every part unsound,
Down, down they sink, and spread a ruin round.
9. E'en now the devasta'tion is begun,
And half the businèss of destruction done;
E'en now, methinks, as pondering here I stand,
I see the rural virtues leave the land.
Down where yon anchoring vessel spreads the sail,
That, idly waiting, flaps with every gale,
Downward they move, a melancholy band,
Pass from the shōre, and darken all the strand.
Contented Toil, and hospitable Care,
And kind connubial Tenderness, are there;
And Piety, with wishes placed above
And steady Loyalty, and faithful Love.
10. And thou, sweet Poëtry! thou loveliest maid,
Still first to fly, where sensual joys invade!
Unfit, in these degenerate times of shame,
To catch the heart, or strike for honest Fame ⇓
Dear, charming nymph, neglected and decried,
My shame in crowds, my solitary pride;
Thou source of all my bliss and all my woe,
That found'st me poor at first, and keep'st me so,
Thou guide by which the nobler arts excel,
Thou nurse of every virtue, fare thee well.
11. Farewell; and oh! where'er thy voice be tried,
On Torno's cliffs or Pambamarca's side,
Whether where equinoctial fervors glow,
Or winter wraps the polar world in snow,
Still let thy voice, prevailing over time,
Redress the rigors of the inclement clime;
And slighted Truth, with thy persuasive strain,
Teach ĕrring man to spurn the rage of gain;
Teach him, that States, of native strength possessed,
Though very poor, may still be very blessed;
That trade's proud empire hastes to swift decay,
As ocean sweeps the labored mōle ǎwāy ;
While self-dependent power can time defy.
As rocks resist the billows and the sky.
OLIVER GOLDSMITH, one of the most pleasing English writers of the eighteenth century, was born at Pallas, Ireland, in November, 1728. He was of a Protestant and Saxon family which had long been settled in Ireland. At the time of Oli ver's birth, his father with difficulty supported his family on what he could earn, partly as a curate and partly as a farmer. Soon after, he was presented with a
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