The Age Reviewed A Satire: In two parts: Second edition, revised and corrected [by Robert Montgomery] |
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| I. |
| II. |
 | The Age Reviewed |  |
Behold our peasantry! Britannia's pride,
While baleful Luxury her boon denied;
The tyrant grasp of Desolation spoils
Each homely shelter for the lab'rer's toils;
While sad and far the houseless peasant flies,
And mansions o'er his ruined hamlet rise:
For him no more shall bloom the garden flower,
No Sabbath guest shall greet his hazel bower,
Nor winter's evening bring domestic bliss,
Nor laughing infants leap to share the kiss.—
Inhuman tyrants, whose destructive hand,
To grasp domain, would desolate the land;
Can barren pomp one joyous hour bestow,
While famine fills a thousand hearts with woe?
Can palisadoed lawns of wide extent
Please, like the rural homes of calm Content?
Sweeter by far, methinks, were Wealth to pour
Diffusive blessings from her ample door;
And where the sick man pin'd, to visit there,
And with the smile of mercy, hush'd despair.
And dear the scene that charmed the pilgrim's eye,
Ere Luxury rose, or Avarice pealed her cry;
Where cottage homes, upon the green domain,
Were health and shelter to the toiling swain:
There many a way-worn trav'ller sighing stay'd,
And ask'd of heaven some equal hamlet shade,
Where humble life flowed undisturbed away,
And happiness led on each new-born day.
The smoke enwreathing with the playful breeze,
The glowing produce, ripening on the trees,
The rilling bee low-humming in the flower,
Or pigeon cooing from his woody tower,
With all the nameless charms that nestle round
The cottage garden, and the pasture ground,
Made every passing stranger stop awhile,
And lit his ling'ring eye with many a smile.
Here was the home, where toil-worn age, at last,
Might rest secure, and muse on labours past;
Here was the welcome round of rustic mirth,
The family supper, and the blazing hearth,
The happy converse, and the cheerful gaze,
With all that Gratitude to Mercy pays.
Rare now is such a rural scene as this,
Such peaceful plenty, and such healthful bliss;
Oppressive Wealth usurps each lawny spot;
Where bloomed the garden, and where rose the cot,
Mansions and groves, and princely parks abound,
Stretch o'er the plain, and seize each rood of ground,
While Pomp frowns every humble home away,
And leaves the peasant but a scanty pay;
Doomed through the day to bear the summer blaze,
Or mend, 'mid ice and snow, the public ways;
Or else beneath the bleak autumnal showers,
In damp and pain to pass the tedious hours,—
A pittance from the tyrant of the soil
Is all that pays him for his dismal toil;
Then home he wanders to a cheerless shed,
With discontented heart and aching head:
Here shall no rosy babes, or smiling wife,
Attend to make the sweetnesses of life;
No social ease to keep the mind in tune,
And shed delight around life's waning noon;
But starving infants, with imploring eyes,
Raising their little hands and piteous cries,
Till agony distract the parent's brain,
Flame the wild thought, and rack the soul with pain;
When Want bursts every tie of virtue free,
And Crime conducts him to the gallows-tree!
While baleful Luxury her boon denied;
The tyrant grasp of Desolation spoils
Each homely shelter for the lab'rer's toils;
81
And mansions o'er his ruined hamlet rise:
For him no more shall bloom the garden flower,
No Sabbath guest shall greet his hazel bower,
Nor winter's evening bring domestic bliss,
Nor laughing infants leap to share the kiss.—
Inhuman tyrants, whose destructive hand,
To grasp domain, would desolate the land;
Can barren pomp one joyous hour bestow,
While famine fills a thousand hearts with woe?
Can palisadoed lawns of wide extent
Please, like the rural homes of calm Content?
Sweeter by far, methinks, were Wealth to pour
Diffusive blessings from her ample door;
And where the sick man pin'd, to visit there,
And with the smile of mercy, hush'd despair.
82
Ere Luxury rose, or Avarice pealed her cry;
Where cottage homes, upon the green domain,
Were health and shelter to the toiling swain:
There many a way-worn trav'ller sighing stay'd,
And ask'd of heaven some equal hamlet shade,
Where humble life flowed undisturbed away,
And happiness led on each new-born day.
The smoke enwreathing with the playful breeze,
The glowing produce, ripening on the trees,
The rilling bee low-humming in the flower,
Or pigeon cooing from his woody tower,
With all the nameless charms that nestle round
The cottage garden, and the pasture ground,
Made every passing stranger stop awhile,
And lit his ling'ring eye with many a smile.
Here was the home, where toil-worn age, at last,
Might rest secure, and muse on labours past;
Here was the welcome round of rustic mirth,
The family supper, and the blazing hearth,
83
With all that Gratitude to Mercy pays.
Rare now is such a rural scene as this,
Such peaceful plenty, and such healthful bliss;
Oppressive Wealth usurps each lawny spot;
Where bloomed the garden, and where rose the cot,
Mansions and groves, and princely parks abound,
Stretch o'er the plain, and seize each rood of ground,
While Pomp frowns every humble home away,
And leaves the peasant but a scanty pay;
Doomed through the day to bear the summer blaze,
Or mend, 'mid ice and snow, the public ways;
Or else beneath the bleak autumnal showers,
In damp and pain to pass the tedious hours,—
A pittance from the tyrant of the soil
Is all that pays him for his dismal toil;
Then home he wanders to a cheerless shed,
With discontented heart and aching head:
84
Attend to make the sweetnesses of life;
No social ease to keep the mind in tune,
And shed delight around life's waning noon;
But starving infants, with imploring eyes,
Raising their little hands and piteous cries,
Till agony distract the parent's brain,
Flame the wild thought, and rack the soul with pain;
When Want bursts every tie of virtue free,
And Crime conducts him to the gallows-tree!
Some accuse Goldsmith of describing “what was not the fact,” when he wrote his “Deserted Village;” alas! that poem is now realized. There are some people who laugh at miseries they have never seen, and fail to sympathize with those they never experienced; they will tell us, that we fancy evils. But this is paltry, wilful delusion. Want, vice, and famine, have been, and still are, oppressing the village poor. The neat, cheerful cottage home is rare; and what is of almost equal importance, the cottage manners, and morals are polluted by two corruptions. Why are the farmers and country gentlemen ashamed to be what their ancestors were some years back?
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