lage of the plain, Where health and plenty cheered the laboring swain, Where smiling Spring its earliest visit paid, And parting Summer's lingering 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.

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;

went round,

When every rood of ground maintained its

man;

For him light Labor spread her wholesome store,

Just gave what life required, but gave no

more,

His best companions innocence and health, And his best riches ignorance of wealth.

pain.

In all my wanderings round this world of

care,

In all my griefs-and God has given my share

I still had hopes, my latest hours to crown, Amidst these humble bowers to lay ine

down:

To husband out life's taper at the close,

train

Usurp the land and dispossess the swain; Along the lawn, where scattered hamlets

rose,

Unwieldy wealth and cumbrous pomp re

pose,

And every want to Opulence allied,
And every pang that Folly pays to pride.
Those gentle hours that Plenty bade to

bloom,

pose;

I still had hopes-for pride attends us still-. Amidst the swains to show my book-learned

skill,

Around iny fire an evening group to draw, And tell of all I felt and all I saw ;

And, as a hare whom hounds and horns pur

sue

room,

Here to return, and die at home at last.

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 or easeWho 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
Το 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,

below.

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

The noisy geese that gabbled o'er the pool, The playful children just let loose from school,

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.

train ;

mind,

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

pain;

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

breast;