THE DESERTED VILLAGE.

WEET Auburn, loveliest vil- | And still, as each repeated pleasure tired,
Succeeding sports the mirthful band in-

lage of the plain,
Where health and plenty
cheered the laboring
swain,
Where smiling Spring its
earliest visit paid,
And parting Summer's lin-
gering blooms delayed,
Dear lovely bowers of inno-

cence and ease,

Seats of my youth, when every sport could please, How often have I loitered o'er thy green, Where humble happiness endeared each

scene!

How often have I paused on every charm-
The sheltered cot, the cultivated farm,
The never-failing brook, the busy mill,

The decent church that topt the neighboring
hill,

spired.

The dancing pair that simply sought re

nown,

By holding out, to tire each other down;
The swain mistrustless of his smutted face,
While secret laughter tittered round the
place;

The bashful virgin's sidelong looks of love,
The matron's glance that would those looks

reprove,

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.

The hawthorn bush with seats beneath the Sweet smiling village, loveliest of the lawn, shade

For talking age and whispering lovers made!
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 surveyed,
And many a gambol frolicked o'er the
ground,

Thy sports are fled and all thy charms with

drawn ;

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 ;
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;

And sleights of art and feats of strength Amidst thy desert walks the lapwing flies,
And tires their echoes with unvaried cries;

went round,

A time there was, ere England's griefs Swells at my breast and turns the past to

But times are altered: Trade's unfeeling And keep the flame from wasting by re

Those calm desires that asked but little I still had hopes, my long vexations past,

Oh, blest retirement, friend to life's decline,
Retreats from care that never must be mine!
How happy he who crowns in shades like
these

A youth of labor 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
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 unperceived decay,
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;
There as I passed with careless steps and

slow

But now the sounds of population fail;
No cheerful murmurs fluctuate in the gale;
No busy steps the grass-grown footway tread,
For all the bloomy flush of life is fled-
All but yon widowed, solitary thing
That feebly bends beside the plashy spring;
She, wretched matron, forced in age for bread
To strip the brook with mantling cresses
spread,

To pick her wintry fagot from the thorn,
To seek her nightly shed and weep till

morn,

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,

The mingling notes came softened from Nor e'er had changed, nor wished to change, below.

The swain responsive as the milkmaid sung, The sober herd that lowed to meet their young,

his place;

Unpractised he to fawn or seek for power
By doctrines fashioned to the varying hour;
Far other aims his heart had learned to
prize,

More skilled to raise the wretched than to
rise.

The noisy geese that gabbled o'er the pool, The playful children just let loose from school, The watchdog's voice that bayed the whis- His house was known to all the vagrant pering wind, And the loud laugh that spoke the vacant He chid their wanderings, but relieved their mind,-

These all in sweet confusion sought the shade And filled each pause the nightingale had made.

train;

pain;

The long-remembered beggar was his guest,
Whose beard, descending, swept his aged

breast;

The ruined spendthrift, now no longer proud, | Truth from his lips prevailed with double

He watched and wept, he prayed and felt, Swells from the vale and midway leaves the

Despair and Anguish fled the struggling Well had the boding tremblers learned to

Comfort came down the trembling wretch to The day's disasters in his morning face;