Ye friends to truth, ye statesmen, who survey 265 The rich man’s joys increase, the poor’s decay, ’Tis yours to judge, how wide the limits stand Between a splendid and a happy land. Proud swells the tide with loads of freighted ore, And shouting Folly hails them from her shore; 270 Hoards, e’en beyond the miser’s wish abound, And rich men flock from all the world around. Yet count our gains. This wealth is but a name That leaves our useful products still the same. Nor so the loss. The man of wealth and pride 275 Takes up a space that many poor supplied; Space for his lake, his park’s extended bounds, Space for his horses, equipage, and hounds; The robe that wraps his limbs in silken sloth Has robb’d the neighbouring fields of half their growth, 280 His seat, where solitary sports are seen, Indignant spurns the cottage from the green; Around the world each needful product flies, For all the luxuries the world supplies: While thus the land adorn’d for pleasure, all 285 In barren splendour feebly waits the fall. As some fair female unadorn’d and plain, Secure to please while youth confirms her reign, Slights every borrow’d charm that dress supplies, Nor shares with art the triumph of her eyes: 290 But when those charms are pass’d, 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 betray’d, 295 In nature’s simplest charms at first array’d; But verging to decline, its splendours rise, Its vistas strike, its palaces surprise; While scourg’d by famine from the smiling land, The mournful peasant leads his humble band; 300 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 continuous pride? If to some common’s fenceless limits stray’d, 305 He drives his flock to pick the scanty blade, Those fenceless fields the sons of wealth divide, And e’en the bare-worn common is denied.