The Household Book of Poetry

Low lies that house where nut-brown draughts inspired,

Where gray-beard mirth and smiling toil retired, Where village statesmen talked with looks profound,

And news much older than their ale went round. Imagination fondly stoops to trace

The parlor splendors of that festive place:
The whitewashed wall, the nicely sanded floor,
The varnished clock that clicked behind the door,
The chest contrived a double debt to pay-
A bed by night, a chest of drawers by day,
The pictures placed for ornament and use,
The twelve good rules, the royal game of goose;
The hearth, except when winter chilled the
day,

With aspen-boughs, and flowers and fennel gay;
While broken tea-cups, wisely kept for show,
Ranged o'er the chimney, glistened in a row.

Vain, transitory splendor! could not all Reprieve the tottering mansion from its fall? Obscure it sinks, nor shall it more impart An hour's importance to the poor man's heart; 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 lean 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 prest, Shall kiss the cup to pass it to the rest.

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.

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 à splendid and a happy land. Proud swells the tide with loads of freighted

ore,

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.
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
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 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;

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;
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,

THE DESERTED VILLAGE.

663

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
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,
There the pale artist plies the sickly trade;

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 pois'nous 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,

Here while the proud their long-drawn pomps dis- And savage men more murderous still than play,

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.
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 blest,
Has wept at tales of innocence distrest;
Her modest 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:

they;

While oft in whirls the mad tornado flies,

| Mingling the ravaged landscape with the skies.
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!

And, pinched with cold, and shrinking from the The good old sire the first prepared to go
shower,

With heavy heart deplores that luckless hour
When, idly first, ambitious of the town,
She left her wheel, and robes of country brown.

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,

Do thine, sweet Auburn-thine the loveliest Silent went next, neglectful of her charms,
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.

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;
Whilst her fond husband strove to lend relief
In all the silent manliness of grief.

O luxury! thou curst by Heaven's decree,

Far different there, from all that charmed be- How ill exchanged are things like these for thee!

fore,

The various terrors of that horrid shore:

How do thy potions, 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.

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,
Pass from the shore, 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.
And thou, sweet poetry, 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!

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 th' inclement clime;
Aid slighted truth with thy persuasive strain;
Teach erring man to spurn the rage of gain;
Teach him that states, of native strength pos-
sest,

Though very poor, may still be very blest;
That trade's proud empire hastes to swift decay,
As ocean sweeps the labored mole away;
While self-dependent power can time defy,
As rocks resist the billows and the sky.

OLIVER GOLDSMITH.

The Bells of Shandon.

Sabbata pango;

Funera plango;
Solemnia clango.

INSCRIPTION ON AN OLD BELL.

WITH deep affection
And recollection

I often think of

Those Shandon bells,
Whose sounds so wild would,
In the days of childhood,
Fling round my cradle
Their magic spells.

On this I ponder
Where'er I wander,
And thus grow fonder,

Sweet Cork, of theeWith thy bells of Shandon, That sound so grand on The pleasant waters

Of the river Lee.

I've heard bells chiming
Full many a clime in,
Tolling sublime in
Cathedral shrine,
While at a glibe rate
Brass tongues would vibrate;
But all their music

Spoke naught like thine.

For memory, dwelling
On each proud swelling
Of thy belfry, knelling
Its bold notes free,
Made the bells of Shandon
Sound far more grand on
The pleasant waters

Of the river Lee.

I've heard bells tolling Old Adrian's Mole in, Their thunder rolling

From the VaticanAnd cymbals glorious Swinging uproarious In the gorgeous turrets Of Notre Dame;

What a world of merriment their melody fore- In a mad expostulation with the deaf and frantic

And the people-ah, the people —
They that dwell up in the steeple,
All alone,

And who tolling, tolling, tolling,
In that muffled monotone,

Feel a glory in so rolling

On the human heart a stoneThey are neither man nor woman— They are neither brute nor humanThey are ghouls:

And their king it is who tolls;
And he rolls, rolls, rolls,
Rolls,

A pæan from the bells!
And his merry bosom swells
With the pean of the bells!
And he dances and he yells;
Keeping time, time, time,
In a sort of Runic rhyme,
To the pean of the bells —

Of the bells:
Keeping time, time, time,
In a sort of Runic rhyme,

To the throbbing of the bells-
Of the bells, bells, bells-
To the sobbing of the bells;

Keeping time, time, time,
As he knells, knells, knells,

In a happy Runic rhyme,
To the rolling of the bells-
Of the bells, bells, bells-
To the tolling of the bells,
Of the bells, bells, bells, bells-
Bells, bells, bells-

To the moaning and the groaning of the bells.
EDGAR ALLAN POE.

Alexander's Feast; or, the Power of

Music.

AN ODE IN HONOR OF ST. CECILIA'S DAY.

'Twas at the royal feast for Persia won
By Philip's warlike son:
Aloft, in awful state,

The godlike hero sate
On his imperial throne;

His valiant peers were placed around,

Their brows with roses and with myrtles bound; (So should desert in arms be crowned);

The lovely Thais by his side

Sate, like a blooming eastern bride,

In flower of youth and beauty's pride.
Happy, happy, happy pair!

None but the brave,

None but the brave deserves the fair.

CHORUS.

Happy, happy, happy pair!

None but the brave,

None but the brave deserves the fair.

Timotheus, placed on high

Amid the tuneful quire,

With flying fingers touched the lyre; The trembling notes ascend the sky, And heavenly joys inspire.

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