THE
VILLAGE
BOOK I.
THE Village life, and every care that reignsO'er youthful peasants and declining swains;What labour yields, and what, that labour past,Age, in its hour of languor, finds at last;What form the real picture of the poor,Demand a song—The Muse can give no more. Fled are those times, when, in harmonious strains,The rustic poet prais'd his native plains;No shepherds now in smooth alternate verse.Their country's beauty or their nymphs' rehearse;Yet still for these we frame the tender strain,Still in our lays, fond Corydons complain,And shepherds' boys, their amorous pains reveal,The only pains, alas! they never feel.
