Ambition's lofty views, the pomp of state, The pride of wealth, the splendour of the great, Stripp'd of their mask, their cares and troubles known, Are visions far less happy than thy own: Go on! and, while the sons of care complain, Be wisely gay and innocently vain; While serious souls are by their fears undone, Blow sportive bladders in the beamy sun, And call them worlds! and bid the greatest show More radiant colours in their worlds below; 690 Then, as they break, the slaves of care reprove, And tell them, Such are all the toys they love." FOOTNOTES: [14] In the more ancient libraries, works of value and importance were fastened to their places by a length of chain; and might so be perused, but not taken away. THE VILLAGE. _IN TWO BOOKS._ BOOK I. The Subject proposed--Remarks upon Pastoral Poetry--A Tract of Country near the Coast described--An impoverished Borough--Smugglers and their Assistants--Rude Manners of the Inhabitants--Ruinous Effects of a high Tide--The Village Life more generally considered: Evils of it--The youthful Labourer--The old Man: his Soliloquy--The Parish Workhouse: its Inhabitants--The sick Poor: their Apothecary--The dying Pauper--The Village Priest. The Village Life, and every care that reigns O'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 praised his native plains. No shepherds now, in smooth alternate verse, Their country's beauty or their nymphs' rehearse; 10 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. On Mincio's banks, in Cæsar's bounteous reign, If Tityrus found the Golden Age again, Must sleepy bards the flattering dream prolong, Mechanic echoes of the Mantuan song? From Truth and Nature shall we widely stray, Where Virgil, not where Fancy, leads the way? 20 Yes, thus the Muses sing of happy swains, Because the Muses never knew their pains. They boast their peasants' pipes; but peasants now Resign their pipes and plod behind the plough; And few, amid the rural-tribe, have time To number syllables, and play with rhyme; Save honest Duck, what son of verse could share The poet's rapture, and the peasant's care? Or the great labours of the field degrade, With the new peril of a poorer trade? 30 From this chief cause these idle praises spring, That themes so easy few forbear to sing; For no deep thought the trifling subjects ask: To sing of shepherds is an easy task.