<div style="background:#fff;border:#bbb dashed 1px;padding:5px"><a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=472307" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><div style="margin:10px 0"><strong>The Deserted Village</strong></div><div style="margin:10px 0">Sweet Auburn! loveliest village of the plain,<br>Where health and plenty cheered the labouring swain,<br>Where smiling spring its earliest visits paid,<br>And parting summer's lingering blooms delayed:<br>Dear lovely bowers of innocence and ease,<br>Seats of my youth, where every sport could please,<br>How often have I loitered o'er your green,<br>Where humble happiness endeared each scene;<br>How often have I paused on every charm,<br>The sheltered cot, the cultivated farm,<br>The never-failing brook, the busy mill,<br>The decent church that topped the neighbouring hill,<br>The hawthorn bush, with seats beneath the shade,<br>For talking age and whispering lovers made;<br>How often have I blessed the coming day,<br>When toil remitting lent its turn to play,<br>And all the village train, from labour free,<br>Led up their sports beneath the spreading tree:<br>While many a pastime circled in the shade,<br>The young contending as the old surveyed;<br>And many a gambol frolicked o'er the ground,<br>And sleights of art and feats of strength went round;<br>And still as each repeated pleasure tired,<br>Succeeding sports the mirthful band inspired;<br>The dancing pair that simply sought renown<br>By holding out to tire each other down!<br>The swain mistrustless of his smutted face,<br>While secret laughter tittered round the place;<br>The bashful virgin's sidelong look of love,<br>The matron's glance that would those looks reprove:<br>These were thy charms, sweet village; sports like these,<br>With sweet succession, taught even toil to please;<br>These round thy bowers their cheerful influence shed,<br>These were thy charms&mdash;But all these charms are fled.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Sweet smiling village, loveliest of the lawn,<br>Thy sports are fled, and all thy charms withdrawn;<br>Amidst thy bowers the tyrant's hand is seen,<br>And desolation saddens all thy green:<br>One only master grasps the whole domain,<br>And half a tillage stints thy smiling plain:<br>No more thy glassy brook reflects the day,<br>But choked with sedges works its weedy way.<br>Along thy glades, a solitary guest,<br>The hollow-sounding bittern guards its nest;<br>Amidst thy desert walks the lapwing flies,<br>And tires their echoes with unvaried cries.<br>Sunk are thy bowers, in shapeless ruin all,<br>And the long grass o'ertops the mouldering wall;<br>And, trembling, shrinking from the spoiler's hand,<br>Far, far away, thy children leave the land.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Ill fares the land, to hastening ills a prey,<br>Where wealth accumulates, and men decay:<br>Princes and lords may flourish, or may fade;<br>A breath can make them, as a breath has made;<br>But a bold peasantry, their country's pride,<br>When once destroyed can never be supplied.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">A time there was, ere England's griefs began,<br>When every rood of ground maintained its man;<br>For him light labour spread her wholesome store,<br>Just gave what life required, but gave no more:<br>His best companions, innocence and health;<br>And his best riches, ignorance of wealth.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">But times are altered; trade's unfeeling train<br>Usurp the land and dispossess the swain;<br>Along the lawn, where scattered hamlet's rose,<br>Unwieldy wealth and cumbrous pomp repose,<br>And every want to opulence allied,<br>And every pang that folly pays to pride.<br>Those gentle hours that plenty bade to bloom,<br>Those calm desires that asked but little room,<br>Those healthful sports that graced the peaceful scene,<br>Lived in each look, and brightened all the green;<br>These, far departing, seek a kinder shore,<br>And rural mirth and manners are no more.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Sweet Auburn! parent of the blissful hour,<br>Thy glades forlorn confess the tyrant's power.<br>Here as I take my solitary rounds,<br>Amidst thy tangling walks and ruined grounds,<br>And, many a year elapsed, return to view<br>Where once the cottage stood, the hawthorn grew,<br>Remembrance wakes with all her busy train,<br>Swells at my breast, and turns the past to pain.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">In all my wanderings round this world of care,<br>In all my griefs&mdash;and God has given my share&mdash; <br>I still had hopes my latest hours to crown,<br>Amidst these humble bowers to lay me down;<br>To husband out life's taper at the close,<br>And keep the flame from wasting by repose.<br>I still had hopes, for pride attends us still,<br>Amidst the swains to show my book-learned skill,<br>Around my fire an evening group to draw,<br>And tell of all I felt and all I saw;<br>And, as a hare, whom hounds and horns pursue,<br>Pants to the place from whence at first she flew,<br>I still had hopes, my long vexations passed,<br>Here to return&mdash;and die at home at last.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">O blest retirement, friend to life's decline,<br>Retreats from care, that never must be mine,<br>How happy he who crowns in shades like these<br>A youth of labour with an age of ease;<br>Who quits a world where strong temptations try,<br>And, since 'tis hard to combat, learns to fly!<br>For him no wretches, born to work and weep,<br>Explore the mine, or tempt the dangerous deep;<br>No surly porter stands in guilty state<br>To spurn imploring famine from the gate;<br>But on he moves to meet his latter end,<br>Angels round befriending Virtue's friend;<br>Bends to the grave with unperceived decay,<br>While Resignation gently slopes the way;<br>All, all his prospects brightening to the last,<br>His Heaven commences ere the world be past!</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Sweet was the sound when oft at evening's close<br>Up yonder hill the village murmur rose;<br>There, as I passed with careless steps and slow,<br>The mingling notes came softened from below;<br>The swain responsive as the milkmaid sung,<br>The sober herd that lowed to meet their young;<br>The noisy geese that gabbled o'er the pool,<br>The playful children just let loose from school;<br>The watchdog's voice that bayed the whisp'ring wind,<br>And the loud laugh that spoke the vacant mind;<br>These all in sweet confusion sought the shade,<br>And filled each pause the nightingale had made.<br>But now the sounds of population fail,<br>No cheerful murmurs fluctuate in the gale,<br>No busy steps the grass-grown footway tread,<br>For all the bloomy flush of life is fled.<br>All but yon widowed, solitary thing,<br>That feebly bends beside the plashy spring;<br>She, wretched matron, forced in age for bread<br>To strip the brook with mantling cresses spread,<br>To pick her wintry faggot from the thorn,<br>To seek her nightly shed, and weep till morn;<br>She only left of all the harmless train,<br>The sad historian of the pensive plain.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Near yonder copse, where once the garden smiled,<br>And still where many a garden flower grows wild;<br>There, where a few torn shrubs the place disclose,<br>The village preacher's modest mansion rose.<br>A man he was to all the country dear,<br>And passing rich with forty pounds a year;<br>Remote from towns he ran his godly race,<br>Nor e'er had changed, nor wished to change, his place;<br>Unpractised he to fawn, or seek for power,<br>By doctrines fashioned to the varying hour;<br>Far other aims his heart had learned to prize,<br>More skilled to raise the wretched than to rise.<br>His house was known to all the vagrant train,<br>He chid their wanderings, but relieved their pain;<br>The long remembered beggar was his guest,<br>Whose beard descending swept his aged breast;<br>The ruined spendthrift, now no longer proud,<br>Claimed kindred there, and had his claims allowed;<br>The broken soldier, kindly bade to stay,<br>Sat by his fire, and talked the night away;<br>Wept o'er his wounds, or, tales of sorrow done,<br>Shouldered his crutch, and showed how fields were won.<br>Pleased with his guests, the good man learned to glow,<br>And quite forgot their vices in their woe;<br>Careless their merits or their faults to scan,<br>His pity gave ere charity began.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Thus to relieve the wretched was his pride,<br>And e'en his failings leaned to Virtue's side;<br>But in his duty prompt at every call,<br>He watched and wept, he prayed and felt, for all.<br>And, as a bird each fond endearment tries<br>To tempt its new-fledged offspring to the skies,<br>He tried each art, reproved each dull delay,<br>Allured to brighter worlds, and led the way.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Beside the bed where parting life was laid,<br>And sorrow, guilt, and pain, by turns dismayed,<br>The reverend champion stood. At his control<br>Despair and anguish fled the struggling soul;<br>Comfort came down the trembling wretch to raise,<br>And his last faltering accents whispered praise.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">At church, with meek and unaffected grace,<br>His looks adorned the venerable place;<br>Truth from his lips prevailed with double sway,<br>And fools, who came to scoff, remained to pray.<br>The service passed, around the pious man,<br>With steady zeal, each honest rustic ran;<br>Even children followed with endearing wile,<br>And plucked his gown, to share the good man's smile.<br>His ready smile a parent's warmth expressed,<br>Their welfare pleased him, and their cares distressed;<br>To them his heart, his love, his griefs were given,<br>But all his serious thoughts had rest in Heaven.<br>As some tall cliff, that lifts its awful form,<br>Swells from the vale, and midway leaves the storm,<br>Though round its breast the rolling clouds are spread,<br>Eternal sunshine settles on its head.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Beside yon straggling fence that skirts the way,<br>With blossomed furze unprofitably gay,<br>There, in his noisy mansion, skilled to rule,<br>The village master taught his little school;<br>A man severe he was, and stern to view;<br>I knew him well, and every truant knew;<br>Well had the boding tremblers learned to trace<br>The day's disasters in his morning face;<br>Full well they laughed, with counterfeited glee,<br>At all his jokes, for many a joke had he;<br>Full well the busy whisper, circling round,<br>Conveyed the dismal tidings when he frowned;<br>Yet he was kind; or if severe in aught,<br>The love he bore to learning was in fault.<br>The village all declared how much he knew;<br>'Twas certain he could write, and cipher too;<br>Lands he could measure, terms and tides presage,<br>And even the story ran that he could gauge.<br>In arguing too, the parson owned his skill,<br>For e'en though vanquished, he could argue still;<br>While words of learned length and thundering sound<br>Amazed the gazing rustics ranged around,<br>And still they gazed, and still the wonder grew<br>That one small head could carry all he knew.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">But past is all his fame. The very spot<br>Where many a time he triumphed is forgot.<br>Near yonder thorn, that lifts its head on high,<br>Where once the signpost caught the passing eye,<br>Low lies that house where nut-brown draughts inspired,<br>Where grey-beard mirth and smiling toil retired,<br>Where village statesmen talked with looks profound,<br>And news much older than their ale went round.<br>Imagination fondly stoops to trace<br>The parlour splendours of that festive place:<br>The white-washed wall, the nicely sanded floor,<br>The varnished clock that clicked behind the door;<br>The chest contrived a double debt to pay,&mdash; <br>A bed by night, a chest of drawers by day;<br>The pictures placed for ornament and use,<br>The twelve good rules, the royal game of goose;<br>The hearth, except when winter chilled the day,<br>With aspen boughs, and flowers, and fennel gay;<br>While broken teacups, wisely kept for show,<br>Ranged o'er the chimney, glistened in a row.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Vain transitory splendours! Could not all<br>Reprieve the tottering mansion from its fall!<br>Obscure it sinks, nor shall it more impart<br>An hour's importance to the poor man's heart;<br>Thither no more the peasant shall repair<br>To sweet oblivion of his daily care;<br>No more the farmer's news, the barber's tale,<br>No more the woodman's ballad shall prevail;<br>No more the smith his dusky brow shall clear,<br>Relax his ponderous strength, and lean to hear;<br>The host himself no longer shall be found<br>Careful to see the mantling bliss go round;<br>Nor the coy maid, half willing to be pressed,<br>Shall kiss the cup to pass it to the rest.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Yes! let the rich deride, the proud disdain,<br>These simple blessings of the lowly train;<br>To me more dear, congenial to my heart,<br>One native charm, than all the gloss of art.<br>Spontaneous joys, where Nature has its play,<br>The soul adopts, and owns their first-born sway;<br>Lightly they frolic o'er the vacant mind,<br>Unenvied, unmolested, unconfined:<br>But the long pomp, the midnight masquerade,<br>With all the freaks of wanton wealth arrayed,<br>In these, ere triflers half their wish obtain,<br>The toiling pleasure sickens into pain;<br>And, even while fashion's brightest arts decoy,<br>The heart distrusting asks, if this be joy.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Ye friends to truth, ye statesmen, who survey<br>The rich man's joys increase, the poor's decay,<br>'Tis yours to judge how wide the limits stand<br>Between a splendid and a happy land.<br>Proud swells the tide with loads of freighted ore,<br>And shouting Folly hails them from her shore;<br>Hoards even beyond the miser's wish abound,<br>And rich men flock from all the world around.<br>Yet count our gains. This wealth is but a name<br>That leaves our useful products still the same.<br>Not so the loss. The man of wealth and pride<br>Takes up a space that many poor supplied;<br>Space for his lake, his park's extended bounds,<br>Space for his horses, equipage, and hounds;<br>The robe that wraps his limbs in silken sloth<br>Has robbed the neighbouring fields of half their growth;<br>His seat, where solitary sports are seen,<br>Indignant spurns the cottage from the green;<br>Around the world each needful product flies,<br>For all the luxuries the world supplies:<br>While thus the land adorned for pleasure, all<br>In barren splendour feebly waits the fall.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">As some fair female unadorned and plain,<br>Secure to please while youth confirms her reign,<br>Slights every borrowed charm that dress supplies,<br>Nor shares with art the triumph of her eyes;<br>But when those charms are passed, for charms are frail,<br>When time advances and when lovers fail,<br>She then shines forth, solicitous to bless,<br>In all the glaring impotence of dress.<br>Thus fares the land, by luxury betrayed,<br>In nature's simplest charms at first arrayed;<br>But verging to decline, its splendours rise,<br>Its vistas strike, its palaces surprise;<br>While, scourged by famine, from the smiling land<br>The mournful peasant leads his humble band;<br>And while he sinks, without one arm to save,<br>The country blooms&mdash;a garden, and a grave.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Where then, ah! where, shall poverty reside,<br>To 'scape the pressure of contiguous pride?<br>If to some common's fenceless limits strayed,<br>He drives his flock to pick the scanty blade,<br>Those fenceless fields the sons of wealth divide,<br>And even the bare-worn common is denied.<br>If to the city sped&mdash;what waits him there?<br>To see profusion that he must not share;<br>To see ten thousand baneful arts combined<br>To pamper luxury, and thin mankind;<br>To see those joys the sons of pleasure know<br>Extorted from his fellow creature's woe.<br>Here, while the courtier glitters in brocade,<br>There the pale artist plies the sickly trade;<br>Here, while the proud their long-drawn pomps display,<br>There the black gibbet glooms beside the way.<br>The dome where Pleasure holds her midnight reign<br>Here, richly decked, admits the gorgeous train;<br>Tumultuous grandeur crowds the blazing square,<br>The rattling chariots clash, the torches glare.<br>Sure scenes like these no troubles e'er annoy!<br>Sure these denote one universal joy!<br>Are these thy serious thoughts?&mdash;Ah, turn thine eyes<br>Where the poor houseless shivering female lies.<br>She once, perhaps, in a village plenty blessed,<br>Has wept at tales of innocence distressed;<br>Her modest looks the cottage might adorn,<br>Sweet as the primrose peeps beneath the thorn;<br>Now lost to all; her friends, her virtue fled,<br>Near her betrayer's door she lays her head,<br>And, pinched with cold, and shrinking from the shower,<br>With heavy heart deplores that luckless hour,<br>When idly first, ambitious of the town,<br>She left her wheel and robes of country brown.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Do thine, sweet Auburn, thine, the loveliest train,<br>Do thy fair tribes participate her pain?<br>E'en now, perhaps, by cold and hunger led,<br>At proud men's doors they ask a little bread!</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Ah, no!&mdash;To distant climes, a dreary scene,<br>Where half the convex world intrudes between,<br>Through torrid tracts with fainting steps they go,<br>Where wild Altama murmurs to their woe.<br>Far different there from all that charmed before,<br>The various terrors of that horrid shore;<br>Those blazing suns that dart a downward ray<br>And fiercely shed intolerable day;<br>Those matted woods where birds forget to sing,<br>But silent bats in drowsy clusters cling;<br>Those poisonous fields with rank luxuriance crowned,<br>Where the dark scorpion gathers death around;<br>Where at each step the stranger fears to wake<br>The rattling terrors of the vengeful snake;<br>Where crouching tigers wait their hapless prey,<br>And savage men more murderous still than they;<br>While oft in whirls the mad tornado flies,<br>Mingling the ravaged landscape with the skies.<br>Far different these from every former scene,<br>The cooling brook, the grassy-vested green,<br>The breezy covert of the warbling grove,<br>That only sheltered thefts of harmless love.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Good Heaven! what sorrows gloomed that parting day<br>That called them from their native walks away;<br>When the poor exiles, every pleasure passed,<br>Hung round their bowers, and fondly looked their last,<br>And took a long farewell, and wished in vain<br>For seats like these beyond the western main;<br>And, shuddering still to face the distant deep,<br>Returned and wept, and still returned to weep.<br>The good old sire, the first prepared to go<br>To new-found worlds, and wept for others' woe;<br>But for himself, in conscious virtue brave,<br>He only wished for worlds beyond the grave.<br>His lovely daughter, lovelier in her tears,<br>The fond companion of his helpless years,<br>Silent went next, neglectful of her charms,<br>And left a lover's for a father's arms.<br>With louder plaints the mother spoke her woes,<br>And blessed the cot where every pleasure rose;<br>And kissed her thoughtless babes with many a tear,<br>And clasped them close, in sorrow doubly dear;<br>Whilst her fond husband strove to lend relief<br>In all the silent manliness of grief.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">O luxury! thou cursed by Heaven's decree,<br>How ill exchanged are things like these for thee!<br>How do thy potions, with insidious joy,<br>Diffuse thy pleasures only to destroy!<br>Kingdoms by thee, to sickly greatness grown,<br>Boast of a florid vigour not their own;<br>At every draught more large and large they grow,<br>A bloated mass of rank unwieldly woe;<br>Till, sapped their strength, and every part unsound,<br>Down, down they sink, and spread the ruin round.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Even now the devastation is begun,<br>And half the business of destruction done;<br>Even now, methinks, as pondering here I stand,<br>I see the rural virtues leave the land:<br>Down where yon anchoring vessel spreads the sail<br>That idly waiting flaps with every gale,<br>Downward they move, a melancholy band,<br>Pass from the shore, and darken all the strand.<br>Contented toil, and hospitable care,<br>And kind connubial tenderness, are there;<br>And piety with wishes placed above,<br>And steady loyalty, and faithful love.<br>And thou, sweet Poetry, thou loveliest maid,<br>Still first to fly where sensual joys invade;<br>Unfit in these degenerate times of shame<br>To catch the heart, or strike for honest fame;<br>Dear charming nymph, neglected and decried,<br>My shame in crowds, my solitary pride;<br>Thou source of all my bliss, and all my woe,<br>That found'st me poor at first, and keep'st me so;<br>Thou guide by which the nobler arts excel,<br>Thou nurse of every virtue, fare thee well!<br>Farewell, and oh! where'er thy voice be tried,<br>On Torno's cliffs, or Pambamarca's side,<br>Whether where equinoctial fervours glow,<br>Or winter wraps the polar world in snow,<br>Still let thy voice, prevailing over time,<br>Redress the rigours of th' inclement clime;<br>Aid slighted truth; with thy persuasive strain<br>Teach erring man to spurn the rage of gain;<br>Teach him that states of native strength possessed,<br>Though very poor, may still be very blessed;<br>That trade's proud empire hastes to swift decay,<br>As ocean sweeps the laboured mole away;<br>While self-dependent power can time defy,<br>As rocks resist the billows and the sky.</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br /></a><br />poem by <a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/by.php?a=Oliver+Goldsmith">Oliver Goldsmith</a><div class=q> <img src="https://www.citatepedia.ro/g/32share.png" style="float:left" alt="Share"> <script type="text/javascript" src="//s7.addthis.com/js/300/addthis_widget.js#pubid=citatepedia" async="async"></script><div style="display:inline-block" class="addthis_sharing_toolbox" data-url="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=472307" data-title="The Deserted Village de Oliver Goldsmith" data-description="Sweet Auburn! loveliest village of the plain, Where health and plenty cheered the labouring swain, Where smiling spring its earliest visits paid, And parting summer's lingering blooms delayed: Dear lovely bowers of innocence and ease, Seats of my ..."></div> </div> </div>

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