As some fair female unadorned and plain, Secure to please while youth confirms her reign, Slights every borrowed charm that dress supplies, Nor shares with art the triumph of her eyes; But when those charms are passed, for charms are frail, When time advances, and when lovers fail, She then, shines forth, solicitous to bless, In all the glaring impotence of dress. Thus fares the land by luxury betrayed: In nature's simplest charms at first arrayed, But verging to decline, its splendours rise, Its vistas strike, its palaces surprise; While, scourged by famine from the smiling land The mournful peasant leads his humble band, And while he sinks, without one arm to save, The country blooms--a garden and a grave. Where then, ah! where, shall poverty reside, To 'scape the pressure of contiguous pride? If to some common's fenceless limits strayed, He drives his flock to pick the scanty blade, Those fenceless fields the sons of wealth divide, And even the bare-worn common is denied. If to the city sped--what waits him there? To see profusion that he must not share; To see ten thousand baneful arts combined To pamper luxury, and thin mankind; To see those joys the sons of pleasure know Extorted from his fellow-creature's woe. Here while the courtier glitters in brocade, There the pale artist plies the sickly trade; Here while the proud their long-drawn pomps display, There the black gibbet glooms beside the way. The dome where pleasure holds her midnight reign Here, richly decked, admits the gorgeous train: Tumultuous grandeur crowds the blazing square, The rattling chariots clash, the torches glare. Sure scenes like these no troubles e'er annoy! Sure these denote one universal joy! Are these thy serious thoughts?--Ah, turn thine eyes Where the poor houseless shivering female lies. She once, perhaps, in village plenty blessed, Has wept at tales of innocence distressed; Her modest looks the cottage might adorn, Sweet as the primrose peeps beneath the thorn: Now lost to all; her friends, her virtue fled, Near her betrayer's door she lays her head, And, pinched with cold, and shrinking from the shower, With heavy heart deplores that luckless hour, When idly first, ambitious of the town, She left her wheel and robes of country brown. Do thine, sweet Auburn,--thine, the loveliest train,-- Do thy fair tribes participate her pain? Even now, perhaps, by cold and hunger led, At proud men's doors they ask a little bread!