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While thus the land, adorned for pleasure all,

In barren splendor feebly waits the fall. 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;

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But when those charms are past, for charms are frail,

When time advances, and when lovers fail,

She then shines forth, solicitous to bless, In all the glaring impotence of dress,Thus fares the land by luxury betrayed: In nature's simplest 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,

300 And while he sinks, without one arm to save,

The country blooms-a garden and a grave.

Where then, ah! where, shall poverty reside,

To 'scape the pressure of contiguous pride?

If to some common's fenceless limits strayed,

He drives his flock to pick the scanty blade,

Those fenceless fields the sons of wealth divide,

And even 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 311

To pamper luxury and thin mankind; To see those joys the sons of pleasure know

Extorted from his fellow-creature's woe. Here while the courtier glitters in brocade,

There the pale artist plies his sickly trade; Here while the proud their long-drawn pomps display,

There the black gibbet glooms beside the

way.

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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.

Do thine, sweet Auburn,-thine, the loveliest train,

Do thy fair tribes participate her pain Even now, perhaps, by cold and hunger led,

At proud men's doors they ask a little bread! 340

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 Altama1 murmurs to their

woe.

Far different there from all that charmed before

The various terrors of that horrid shore; Those blazing suns that dart a downward

ray,

And fiercely shed intolerable day;

1 Altama. The Altamaha River, in Georgia, vaguely used for American settlements; but Goldsmith confuses them with those of more tropical regions.

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The cooling brook, the grassy vested green,

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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.

370 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

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And kissed her thoughtless babes with many a tear

And clasped them close, in sorrow doubly dear,

Whilst her fond husband strove to lend relief

In all the silent manliness of grief.

O luxury! thou cursed by Heaven's decree,

How ill exchanged are things like these for thee!

How do thy potions, with insidious joy, Diffuse their pleasure 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,

391 A bloated mass of rank unwieldy woe; Till, sapped their strength, and every part unsound,

Down, down, they sink, and spread a ruin round.

Even now the devastation is begun, And half the business of destruction done;

Even 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,

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I'm truly sorry man's dominion Has broken nature's social union, An' justifies that ill opinion

Which makes thee startle

ΙΟ

At me, thy poor, earth-born companion, An' fellow-mortal!

I doubt na, whyles, 15 but thou may thieve;

What then? poor beastie, thou maun live!

A daimen icker in a thrave16

'S a sma' request;

I'll get a blessin wi' the lave,17
An' never miss't!

Thy wee bit housie, too, in ruin!
Its silly wa's 18 the win's are strewin!
An' naething, now, to big19 a new ane,
O' foggage20 green!

An' bleak December's winds ensuin,
Baith snell21 an' keen!

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