The Poems of Oliver Goldsmith
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Thy sports are fled, and all thy charms withdrawn;

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 chok’d with sedges works its weedy way;

Along thy glades, a solitary guest,

The hollow-sounding bittern guards its nest;

Amidst thy desert walks the lapwing flies,

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.

36

36

Ill fares the land, to hastening ills a prey,


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