SWEET AUBURN! loveliest village of the plain, Where health and plenty cheer’d the labouring swain, Where smiling spring its earliest visit paid, And parting summer’s lingering blooms delay’d: Dear lovely bowers of innocence and ease, 5 Seats of my youth, when every sport could please, How often have I loiter’d o’er thy green, Where humble happiness endear’d each scene; How often have I paus’d on every charm, The shelter’d cot, the cultivated farm, 10 The never-failing brook, the busy mill, The decent church that topp’d the neighbouring hill, The hawthorn bush, with seats beneath the shade, For talking age and whisp’ring lovers made; How often have I bless’d the coming day, 15 When toil remitting lent its turn to play, And all the village train, from labour free, Led up their sports beneath the spreading tree; While many a pastime circled in the shade, The young contending as the old survey’d; 20 And many a gambol frolick’d o’er the ground, And sleights of art and feats of strength went round; And still as each repeated pleasure tir’d, Succeeding sports the mirthful band inspir’d; The dancing pair that simply sought renown, 25 By holding out to tire each other down; The swain mistrustless of his smutted face, While secret laughter titter’d round the place; The bashful virgin’s side-long looks of love, The matron’s glance that would those looks reprove: 30 These were thy charms, sweet village; sports like these, With sweet succession, taught e’en toil to please; These round thy bowers their cheerful influence shed, These were thy charms—But all these charms are fled. Sweet smiling village, loveliest of the lawn, 35 Thy sports are fled, and all thy charms withdrawn; Amidst thy bowers the tyrant’s hand is seen, And desolation saddens all thy green: One only master grasps the whole domain, And half a tillage stints thy smiling plain: 40 No more thy glassy brook reflects the day, But chok’d with sedges, works its weedy way. Along thy glades, a solitary guest, The hollow-sounding bittern guards its nest; Amidst thy desert walks the lapwing flies, 45 And tires their echoes with unvaried cries. Sunk are thy bowers in shapeless ruin all, And the long grass o’ertops the mould’ring wall; And trembling, shrinking from the spoiler’s hand, Far, far away, thy children leave the land. 50 Ill fares the land, to hast’ning ills a prey, Where wealth accumulates, and men decay: Princes and lords may flourish, or may fade; A breath can make them, as a breath has made; But a bold peasantry, their country’s pride, 55 When once destroy’d, can never be supplied.