University of Virginia Library

ENGLISH PEASANTRY.

Behold our peasantry! Britannia's pride
While baleful Luxury her boon denied;
The tyrant grasp of Desolation spoils
Each homely shelter for the labourer's toils;
While sad and far the houseless peasant flies
And mansions o'er his ruin'd hamlet rise:
For him no more shall bloom the garden flower,
No sabbath guest shall greet his hazel bower,
No winter's evening bring domestic bliss,
No 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 wo?
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 if the sick man pined, to visit there
And with the smile of Mercy, hush despair.
And dear the scene that charm'd the pilgrim's eye
Ere Luxury rose, or Avarice peal'd her cry,
Where cottage-homes, upon the green domain
Gave health and shelter to the toiling swain:
There many a way-worn traveller sighing stay'd,
And ask'd of heaven some equal hamlet-shade
Where humble life flow'd undisturb'd away,
And happiness led on each new-born Day.
The smoke enwreathing with the playful breeze,
A glowing produce ripening on the trees,
The laden bee low-humming in some flower,
Or pigeon cooing from his shaded 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 lingering 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 a scene so simply pure as this,—
The quiet plenty and the cottage-bliss!
Oppressive Wealth usurps each lawny spot
Where bloom'd 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 meaner home away
And leaves the peasant but a scanty pay;
Doom'd 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 which 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, nor smiling wife,
Attend to make the sweetnesses of life;
No social case to keep the mind in tune
And shed delight around life's waning noon;
But starving infants with imploring eyes
Raising their pallid hands and piteous cries,
Till agony distract the parent's brain,
Flame the wild thought, or rack the soul with pain;
Till Want burst every tie of virtue free;
And Crime conducts him to the gallows-tree!