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Where grey-beard mirth and smiling toil retired, Where village statesmen talked with looks profound, And news much older than their ale went round. 225 Imagination fondly stoops to trace

The parlour splendours of that festive place:
The white-washed wall, the nicely sanded floor,
The varnished clock that clicked behind the door;
The chest contrived a double debt to pay,
230 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;
235 While broken tea-cups, wisely kept for show,
Ranged o'er the chimney, glistened in a row.
Vain transitory splendours! could not all
Reprieve the tottering mansion from its fall?
Obscure it sinks, nor shall it more impart
240 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;
245 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,
250 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;
255 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, unconfin'd.

But the long pomp, the midnight masquerade,
260 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.

265

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 a splendid and a happy land.

Proud swells the tide with loads of freighted ore, 270 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.
275 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

280 Has robbed the neighbouring 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;
285 While thus the land adorned for pleasure all
In barren splendour 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,
290 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.
295 Thus fares the land by luxury betrayed:
In Nature's simplest charms at first arrayed,
But verging to decline, its splendours rise,
Its vistas strike, its palaces surprise;
While, scourged by famine from the smiling land,
800 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?
805 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 e'en the bare-worn common is denied.

If to the city sped what waits him there?
810 To see profusion that he must not share;
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.

815 Here while the courtier glitters in brocade,
There the pale artist plies the sickly trade;
Here while the proud their long-drawn pomps display,
There the black gibbet glooms beside the way.

The dome where pleasure holds her midnight reign

320 Here richly deck'd 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!

825 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,
330 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,
And, pinch'd with cold, and shrinking from the shower,
With heavy heart deplores that luckless hour,

335 When idly first, ambitious of the town,

She left her wheel and robes of country brown.

Do thine, sweet Auburn, thine, the loveliest train, Do thy fair tribes participate her pain?

E'en now, perhaps, by cold and hunger led, 340 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.

345 Far different there from all that charmed before,
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,

350 But silent bats in drowsy clusters cling;

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,
355 Where crouching tigers wait their hapless prey,
And savage men more murderous still than they;
While oft in whirls the mad tornado flies,
Mingling the ravaged landscape with the skies.
Far different these from every former scene,
360 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;

365 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, 870 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.
375 His lovely daughter, lovelier in her tears,
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 woes,
380 And blest 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.

385 O Luxury! thou cursed by Heaven's decree, How ill exchanged are things like these for thee! How do thy potions, with insidious joy, Diffuse their pleasures only to destroy! Kingdoms by thee to sickly greatness grown, 390 Boast of a florid vigour not their own.

395

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. E'en now the devastation is begun,

And half the business of destruction done;

E'en now, methinks, as pondering here I stand,

I see the rural virtues leave the land.

Down where yon anchoring vessel spreads the sail,

400 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;

405 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 410 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; 415 Thou guide by which the nobler arts excel, Thou nurse of every virtue, fare thee well! Farewell, and O! where'er thy voice be tried,

On Torno's cliffs, or Pambamarca's side,
Whether where equinoctial fervours glow,
420 Or winter wraps the polar world in snow,
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:
425 Teach him that states of native strength possest,
Though very poor, may still be very blest;
That trade's proud empire hastes to swift decay,
As ocean sweeps the laboured mole away;
While self-dependent power can time defy,
430 As rocks resist the billows and the sky.

WILLIAM COLLINS.

WILLIAM COLLINS (1721-1759) was

born at Chichester, and was the son of a well-to-do hatter. He received a good classical education at Winchester, and Magdalen College, Oxford. Too indolent to choose a profession, he went to London to try literature. But a small fortune, which he inherited from an uncle in 1749, enabled him to retire to Chichester. Soon afterwards his health and his mind gave way, and he died in a state of partial insanity at the early age of thirty-six.

Collins has written extremely little. But the twelve Odes which he published in

8

12

16

1746, are remarkable for their harmonious smoothness and wonderful melody, and belong to the best poetry of the century, though at their publication they failed to attract the attention of the public. Simple pathos he exhibited in the Ode on the Death of Mr. Thomson (1748). And his posthumous Ode on the Popular Superstitions of the Highlands of Scotland (1749), first published in the Transactions of the Royal Society for Edinburgh in 1788, is said by Mr. Lowell to have 'foreshadowed the whole Romantic School'.

ODE TO EVENING.

If aught of oaten stop, or pastoral song,
May hope, chaste Eve, to soothe thy modest ear,
Like thy own solemn springs,

Thy springs, and dying gales,

O nymph reserved, while now the bright-haired sun
Sits in yon western tent, whose cloudy skirts,

With brede ethereal wove,

O'erhang his wavy bed:

Now air is hushed, save where the weak-eyed bat
With short, shrill shriek flits by on leathern wing,

Or where the beetle winds

His small but sullen horn,

As oft he rises 'midst the twilight path,

Against the pilgrim borne in heedless hum:

Now teach me, maid composed,
To breathe some softened strain,

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