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| SWEET-SMILING village, loveliest of the lawn! | |
| Thy sports are fled, and all thy charms withdrawn; | |
| Amidst thy bowers the tyrant’s hand is seen, | |
| And desolation saddens all thy green; | |
| One only master grasps the whole domain, | 5 |
| And half a tillage stints thy smiling plain; | |
| No more thy glassy brook reflects the day, | |
| But, choked with sedges, works its weedy way; | |
| Along thy glades, a solitary guest, | |
| The hollow-sounding bittern guards its nest; | 10 |
| Amidst thy desert walks the lapwing flies, | |
| And tires their echoes with unvaried cries; | |
| Sunk are thy bowers in shapeless ruin all, | |
| And the long grass o’ertops the mouldering wall; | |
| And, trembling, shrinking from the spoiler’s hand; | 15 |
| Far, far away thy children leave the land. | |
| |
| Ill fares the land, to hastening ills a prey, | |
| Where wealth accumulates, and men decay: | |
| Princes and lords may flourish, or may fade— | |
| A breath can make them, as a breath has made: | 20 |
| But a bold peasantry, their country’s pride, | |
| When once destroyed, can never be supplied. | |
| A time there was, ere England’s griefs began, | |
| When every rood of ground maintained its man; | |
| For him light labor spread her wholesome store, | 25 |
| Just gave what life required, but gave no more: | |
| His best companions, innocence and health; | |
| And his best riches, ignorance of wealth. | |
| |
| But times are altered: trade’s unfeeling train | |
| Usurp the land, and dispossess the swain; | 30 |
| Along the lawn, where scattered hamlets rose, | |
| Unwieldy wealth and cumbrous pomp repose; | |
| And every want to luxury allied, | |
| And every pang that folly pays to pride, | |
| Those gentle hours that plenty bade to bloom, | 35 |
| Those calm desires that asked but little room, | |
| Those healthful sports that graced the peaceful scene, | |
| Lived in each look, and brightened all the green— | |
| These, far departing, seek a kinder shore, | |
| And rural mirth and manners are no more.… | 40 |
| |
| Ye friends to truth, ye statesmen, who survey | |
| The rich man’s joys increase, the poor’s decay, | |
| ’Tis yours to judge how wide the limits stand | |
| Between a splendid and a happy land. | |
| Proud swells the tide with loads of freighted ore, | 45 |
| And shouting Folly hails them from her shore; | |
| 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. | 50 |
| Not so the loss: the man of wealth and pride | |
| Takes up a space that many poor supplied; | |
| Space for his lake, his park’s extended bounds, | |
| Space for his horses, equipage, and hounds; | |
| The robe that wraps his limbs in silken sloth, | 55 |
| 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; | 60 |
| While thus the land, adorned for pleasure all, | |
| In barren splendor, feebly waits the fall.… | |
| |
| Where then, ah! where, shall poverty reside, | |
| To ’scape the pressure of contiguous pride? | |
| If, to some common’s fenceless limits strayed, | 65 |
| 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; | 70 |
| 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-creatures’ woe. | |
| Here while the courtier glitters in brocade, | 75 |
| There the pale artist plies the sickly trade; | |
| Here while the proud their long-drawn pomps display, | |
| There the black gibbet glooms beside the way. | |
| The dome where Pleasure holds her midnight reign, | |
| Here, richly decked, admits the gorgeous train; | 80 |
| Tumultuous grandeur crowds the blazing square— | |
| The rattling chariots clash, the torches glare. | |
| Sure scenes like these no troubles e’er annoy! | |
| Sure these denote one universal joy! | |
| Are these thy serious thoughts? Ah! turn thine eyes | 85 |
| Where the poor, houseless, shivering female lies; | |
| She once, perhaps, in village plenty blest, | |
| Has wept at tales of innocence distrest; | |
| Her modest looks the cottage might adorn, | |
| Sweet as the primrose peeps beneath the thorn; | 90 |
| 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, | 95 |
| She left her wheel, and robes of country brown.… | |
| |
| O luxury! thou curst by Heaven’s decree, | |
| How ill exchanged are things like these for thee! | |
| How do thy potions, with insidious joy, | |
| Diffuse their pleasures only to destroy! | 100 |
| 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, | 105 |
| Down, down they sink, and spread a ruin round. | |
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