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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Sweet smiling village, loveliest of the lawn, Thy sports are fled, and all thy charms withdrawn ;

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

Along the glades, a solitary guest,

The hollow sounding bittern guards its nest;
Amidst thy desert walks the lapwing flies, 45
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,

Far, far away thy children leave the land. 50 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:

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Pleased with his guests, the good man learned to glow,

And quite forgot their vices in their woe; 160 Careless their merits or their faults to scan, His pity gave ere charity began.

Thus to relieve the wretched was his pride, And c'en his failings leaned to Virtue's side; But in his duty prompt at every call, 165 He watched and wept, he prayed and felt for all;

And, as a bird each fond endearment tries To tempt its new-fledged offspring to the skies, He tried each art, reproved each dull delay, Allured to brighter worlds, and led the way.

Beside the bed where parting life was laid, And sorrow, guilt, and pain by turns dismayed,

172

The reverend champion stood. At his control Despair and anguish fled the struggling soul; Comfort came down the trembling wretch to

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To them his heart, his love, his griefs were given,

But all his serious thoughts had rest in heaven. As some tall cliff that lifts its awful form, Swells from the vale, and midway leaves the storm,

190

Tho' round its breast the rolling clouds are spread,

Eternal sunshine settles on its head.

Beside yon straggling fence that skirts the

way,

With blossom'd furze unprofitably gay,
There, in his noisy mansion, skill'd to rule,
The village master taught his little school.
A man severe he was, and stern to view; 197
I knew him well, and every truant knew;
Well had the boding tremblers learned to

trace

The day's disasters in his morning face;

200

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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,
Those fenceless fields the sons of wealth divide,
And even the bare-worn common 2 is denied.

If to the city sped - what waits him there?
To see profusion that he must not share; 310
To see ten thousand baneful arts combined
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 3 plies the sickly trade;
Here while the proud their long-drawn pomps
display,

314

There the black gibbet glooms beside the way. The dome where pleasure holds her midnight reign

319

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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 : 330

Now lost to all; her friends, her virtue fled,
Near her betrayer's door she lays her head,
And, pinch'd with cold, and shrinking from
the shower,

With heavy heart deplores that luckless hour,
When idly first, ambitious of the town, 335
She left her wheel and robes of country brown.
Do thine, sweet Auburn,
thine, the love-

liest train,

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The various terrors of that horrid shore;
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; 350 Those poisonous 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

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When the poor exiles, every pleasure past, Hung round the bowers, and fondly looked

their last,

371

366 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. 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, 375 The fond companion of his helpless years, Silent went next, neglectful of her charms, And left a lover's for a father's arms. With louder plaints the mother spoke her

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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,1 or Pambamarca's side,2
Whether where equinoctial fervours glow,
Or winter wraps the polar world in snow, 420
Still let thy voice, prevailing over time,
Redress the rigours of the 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
possest,

Tho' very poor, may still be very blest; 426 That trade's proud empire hastes to swift decay,

As ocean sweeps the laboured mole away;
While self-dependent power can time defy,
As rocks resist the billows and the sky.3

FROM RETALIATION

*

430

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was such, We scarcely can praise it, or blame it too much;

1 on the boundary between Russia and Sweden 2 a mountain in Ecuador 3 Lines 427-30 were added by Dr. Johnson. Dr. Barnard, Dean of Derry Edmund Burke

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