THE DESERTED VILLAGE.

SWEET Auburn! loveliest village of the plain, Where health and plenty cheer'd the laboring swain,

Where smiling spring its earliest visit paid,

And parting summer's lingering blooms delay'd; • Dear lovely bowers of innocence and ease, Seats of my youth, when every sport could please, How often have I loiter'd o'er thy green, Where humble happiness endear'd each scene! How often have I paus'd on every charm, 10 The shelter'd cot, the cultivated farm, The never-failing brook, the busy mill,

The decent church that topt the neighboring hill,
The hawthorn bush with seats beneath the shade,
For talking age and whispering lovers made!

15 How often have I blest the coming day,
When toil remitting lent its turn to play,
And all the village train, from labor free,
Led up their sports beneath the spreading tree;
While many a pastime circled in the shade,
The young contending as the old survey'd ;

4. Parting, i. e., departing, much as we use the phrase "to part with." Here summer parts with us.

12. Decent. Following its Latin origin, the word was most commonly used in the eighteenth century in its sense of becom ing, fit.

19. Circled. See an equivalent phrase in line 22.

And many a gambol frolick'd o'er the ground, And sleights of art and feats of strength wen round;

And still, as each repeated pleasure tir'd,

Succeeding sports the mirthful band inspir'd ;
25 The dancing pair that simply sought renown,
By holding out, to tire each other down;
The swain mistrustless of his smutted face,
While secret laughter titter'd round the place;
The bashful virgin's sidelong looks of love,

30 The matron's glance that would those looks reprove:

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These were thy charms, sweet village! sports like these,

With sweet succession, taught e'en toil to please ; These round thy bowers their cheerful influence shed,

These were thy charms, but all these charms are fled.

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 Thy sports are fled, and all thy charms withdrawn; Amidst thy bowers the tyrant's hand is seen, And desolation saddens all thy green: One only master grasps the whole domain, 40 And half a tillage stints thy smiling plain. No more thy glassy brook reflects the day, But chok'd with sedges works its weedy way;

27. The rude sports of the village no doubt survive in English country life; any one who reads the chapter A London Suburb in Hawthorne's Our Old Home will recognize a likeness between. Greenwich Fair as Hawthorne saw it and the Sweet Auburn of Goldsmith's recollection. And American readers could supply from boyish pranks the explanation of

"The swain mistrustless of his smutted face."

Along thy glades, a solitary guest,

The hollow-sounding bittern guards its nest; 45 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, Do 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: 55 But a bold peasantry, their country's pride, When once destroy'd, can never be supplied.

A time there was, ere England's griefs began, When every rood of ground maintain'd its man; For him light labor spread her wholesome store, 60 Just gave what life requir'd, but gave no more; His best companions, innocence and health; And his best riches, ignorance of wealth.

But times are alter'd; trade's unfeeling train Usurp the land, and dispossess the swain;

44. In his Animated Nature, which is a book of descriptive natural history, Goldsmith uses the same term to characterize the bittern. "Of all these sounds," he says, "there is none so dismally hollow as the booming of the bittern. I remember in the place where I was a boy, with what terror this bird's note affected the whole village."

52. Goldsmith wrote earnestly and at some length on this theme in the nineteenth chapter of The Vicar of Wakefield.

63. The plural idea in irain was uppermost in Goldsmith's mind, so that he uses the plural form in the verbs in the next line.

65 Along the lawn, where scatter'd hamlets rose, Unwieldy wealth and cumbrous pomp repose; And every want to opulence allied,

And every pang that folly pays to pride.

Those gentle hours that plenty bade to bloom, 70 Those calm desires that ask'd but little room, Those healthful sports that grac'd the peaceful

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scene,

Liv'd in each look, and brighten'd all the green:

These, far departing, seek a kinder shore,

And rural mirth and manners are no more.

Sweet Auburn! parent of the blissful hour,
Thy glades forlorn confess the tyrant's power.
Here, as I take my solitary rounds

Amidst thy tangling walks and ruin'd grounds,
And, many a year elaps'd, return to view

80 Where once the cottage stood, the hawthorn grew, Remembrance wakes, with all her busy train, Swells at my breast, and turns the past to pain.

In all my wanderings round this world of care, In all my griefs-and God has given my share85 I still had hopes, my latest hours to crown, Amidst these humble bowers to lay me down; To husband out life's taper at the close, And keep the flame from wasting by repose; I still had hopes - for pride attends us still — 90 Amidst the swains to show my book-learn'd skill, Around my fire an evening group to draw,

And tell of all I felt, and all I saw ;

And, as a hare, whom hounds and horns pursue,

74. Manners has here the meaning of customs rather than be havior.

Pants to the place from whence at first she flew, 26 I still had hopes, my long vexations past, Here to return, — and die at home at last.

O blest retirement! friend to life's decline, Retreat from care, that never must be mine, How blest is he who crowns in shades like these 200 A youth of labor with an age of ease;

Who quits a world where strong temptations try,
And, since 't is hard to combat, learns to fly!
For him no wretches, born to work and weep,
Explore the mine, or tempt the dangerous deep;
105 No surly porter stands in guilty state,

To spurn imploring famine from the gate:
But on he moves to meet his latter end,
Angels around befriending virtue's friend;
Bends to the grave with unperceiv'd decay,
10 While resignation gently slopes the way;
And, all his prospects brightening to the last,
His heaven commences ere the world be past.

Sweet was the sound, when oft at evening's close Up yonder hill the village murmur rose. 115 There, as I pass'd with careless steps and slow, The mingling notes came soften'd from below: The swain responsive as the milkmaid sung, The sober herd that low'd to meet their young; The noisy geese that gabbled o'er the pool; 120 The playful children just let loose from school;

101. Goldsmith, writing one may say almost as a journalist, gave little heed to possible repetitions of his phrases, and in The Bee he wrote: "By struggling with misfortunes, we are sure to receive some wound in the conflict: the only method to come off victorious is by running away."