Amidst thy bowers the tyrant's hand is seen, One only master grasps the whole domain, No more thy glassy brook reflects the day, The hollow-sounding bittern guards its nest; 2 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 : 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 labour spread her wholesome store, But times are alter'd; trade's unfeeling train And every pang that folly pays to pride. Those calm desires that ask'd but little room, These, far departing, seek a kinder shore, Sweet AUBURN! parent of the blissful hour, Amidst thy tangling walks and ruin'd grounds, 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 share- I still had hopes, for pride attends us still, And as a hare, whom hounds and horns pursue, O bless'd retirement, friend to life's decline, Retreats from care, that never must be mine, How bless'd is he who crowns, in shades like these, A youth of labour with an age of ease ; Who quits a world where strong temptations try, And, since 'tis hard to combat, learns to fly! For him no wretches, born to work and weep, Explore the mine, or tempt the dangerous deep, No surly porter stands, in guilty state, And fill'd each pause the nightingale had made. But now the sounds of population fail, No cheerful murmurs fluctuate in the gale, No busy steps the grass-grown footway tread,. But all the blooming flush of life is fled; All but yon widow'd, solitary thing, That feebly bends beside the plashy spring; She only left of all the harmless train, The sad historian of the pensive plain. Near yonder copse, where once the garden smiled, And still where many a garden flower grows wild, There, where a few torn shrubs the place disclose, The village preacher's modest mansion rose. A man he was to all the country dear, And passing rich with forty pounds a year; Remote from towns he ran his godly race, Nor e'er had changed, nor wish'd to change his place; Unskilful he to fawn, or seek for power, By doctrines fashion'd to the varying hour; |