For them no more the blazing hearth shall burn,
Or busy housewife ply her evening care:
No children run to lisp their sire's return,

Or climb his knees the envied kiss to share.

Oft did the harvest to their sickle yield,

Their furrow oft the stubborn glebe has broke; How jocund did they drive their team afield! How bow'd the woods beneath their sturdy stroke!

Let not Ambition mock their useful toil,

Their homely joys, and destiny obscure; Nor Grandeur hear with a disdainful smile, The short and simple annals of the Poor.

[The thoughtless world to Majesty may bow,
Exalt the Brave, and idolise Success;

But more to innocence their safety owe,
Than Power or Genius e'er conspired to bless.]*

The boast of heraldry, the pomp of power,

And all that beauty, all that wealth e'er gave, Await alike the inevitable hour :

The paths of glory lead but to the grave.

Nor you, ye proud, impute to these the fault,
If Memory o'er their tombs no trophies raise,
Where through the long-drawn aisle and fretted
vault

The pealing anthem swells the note of praise.

* The stanzas marked by brackets have been recently added from the early editions, or from the MS. left by Gray.

Can storied urn, or animated bust,

Back to its mansion call the fleeting breath? Can Honour's voice provoke the silent dust,

Or Flattery soothe the dull cold ear of Death?

Perhaps in this neglected spot is laid

Some heart once pregnant with celestial fire; Hands, that the rod of empire might have sway'd, Or waked to ecstasy the living lyre:

But Knowledge to their eyes her ample page, Rich with the spoils of time, did ne'er unroll; Chill Penury repress'd their noble rage,

And froze the genial current of the soul.

Full many a gem of purest ray serene,

The dark unfathom'd caves of ocean bear: Full many a flower is born to blush unseen, And waste its sweetness on the desert air.

Some village-Hampden that, with dauntless breast,
The little tyrant of his fields withstood;
Some mute inglorious Milton here may rest,
Some Cromwell, guiltless of his country's blood.

The applause of listening senates to command,
The threats of pain and ruin to despise,

To scatter plenty o'er a smiling land,

And read their history in a nation's eyes,

Their lot forbade : nor circumscribed alone

Their growing virtues, but their crimes confined; Forbade to wade through slaughter to a throne,

And shut the gates of mercy on mankind;

The struggling pangs of conscious truth to hide,
To quench the blushes of ingenuous shame,
Or heap the shrine of Luxury and Pride,

With incense kindled at the Muses' flame.

Far from the madding crowd's ignoble strife-
Their sober wishes never learn'd to stray;
Along the cool sequester'd vale of life

They kept the noiseless tenor of their way.

[Hark! how the sacred calm that breathes around,
Bids every fierce tumultuous passion cease;
In still small accents whispering from the ground
A grateful earnest of eternal peace.]

Yet e'en these bones from insult to protect,
Some frail memorial still erected nigh,

With uncouth rhymes and shapeless sculpture deckt,
Implores the passing tribute of a sigh.

Their name,

their years, spelt by the unletter'd Muse,

The place of fame and elegy supply:

And many a holy text around she strews,
To teach the rustic moralist to die.

For who, to dumb Forgetfulness a prey,
This pleasing anxious being e'er resign'd,
Left the warm precincts of the cheerful day,
Nor cast one longing, lingering look behind?

On some fond breast the parting soul relies,
Some pious drops the closing eye requires :
E'en from the tomb the voice of Nature cries,
E'en in our ashes live their wonted fires.

GOLDSMITH.

1728-1774.

PRINCIPAL WORKS:-The Traveller, 1764, which at once secured universal approbation from both the critics and the public.-The Goodnatured Man (comedy), 1767.-The Deserted Village, 1770.-She Stoops to Conquer (comedy), 1773, brought out at Covent Garden with unusual success. Goldsmith, as is well known, was also a prolific prose-writer both in the periodicals of the day and in a more solid and permanent form; and his Vicar of Wakefield remains the most exquisite gem of its kind in prose-fiction in the English language.

If The Traveller called forth the greater amount of eulogy from the critics of the day, for simplicity and naturalness of style, with the most charming succession of pictures of rural life, The Deserted Village, we imagine, will always and justly secure the preference of most readers. Fiction in poetry,' says Campbell, 'is not the reverse of truth, but her soft and enchanted resemblance; and this ideal beauty of Nature has been seldom united with so much sober fidelity as in the groups of scenery of The Deserted Village.' 'His descriptions and sentiments,' remarks the same just critic,' have the pure zest of Nature. He is refined without false delicacy, and correct without insipidity. Perhaps there is an intellectual composure in his manner, which may, in some passages [in The Traveller], be said to approach to the reserved and prosaic; but he unbends from this graver strain of reflection to tenderness, and even to playfulness, with an ease and grace almost exclusively his own, and connects extensive views of the happiness and interests of society with pictures of life that touch the heart by their familiarity. His language is certainly simple, though it is not cast in a rugged or careless mould. He is no disciple of the gaunt and famished school of simplicity. Deliberately as he wrote, he cannot be accused of wanting natural and idiomatic expression, but still it is select and refined expression. His whole manner has a still depth of feeling and reflection which gives back the image of Nature unruffled and minutely. He has no redundant thoughts or false transports; but seems, on every occasion, to have weighed the impulse to which he surrendered himself.'

THE DESERTED VILLAGE.

SWEET AUBURN! loveliest village of the plain,
Where health and plenty cheer'd the labouring swain,
Where smiling Spring its earliest visit paid,
And parting Summer's lingering blooms delay'd;
Dear lovely bowers of innocence and ease,
Seats of my youth, when every sport could please;
How often have I loiter'd o'er thy green,

Where humble happiness endear'd each scene!
How often have I paused on every charm--

The shelter'd cot, the cultivated farm,

The never-failing brook, the busy mill,

The decent church that topp'd the neighbouring hill;
The hawthorn bush, with seats beneath the shade,
For talking age, and whispering lovers made.

How often have I bless'd the coming day

When toil remitting lent its turn to play,

And all the village train, from labour free,
Led up their sports beneath the spreading tree;
While many a pastime circled in the shade,
The young contending as the old survey'd,
And many a gambol frolick'd o'er the ground,
And sleights of art, and feats of strength went round;
And still, as each repeated pleasure tired,

Succeeding sports the mirthful band inspired :
The dancing pair that simply sought renown
By holding out to tire each other down;
The swain, mistrustless of his smutted face,
While secret laughter titter'd round the place;
The bashful virgin's sidelong looks of love,

The matron's glance that would those looks reprove.