O bless’d retirement, friend to life’s decline, Retreats from care, that never must be mine! How happy he who crowns, in shades like these, A youth of labour with an age of ease; Who quits a world where strong temptations try, And, since ’tis hard to combat, learns to fly. For him no wretches, born to work and weep, Explore the mine, or tempt the dangerous deep; No surly porter stands, in guilty state, To spurn imploring famine from the gate; But on he moves, to meet his latter end, Angels around befriending virtue’s friend-- Bends to the grave with unperceiv’d decay, While resignation gently slopes the way-- And, all his prospects brightening to the last, His heaven commences ere the world be past. [Illustration] Sweet was the sound, when oft at evening’s close Up yonder hill the village murmur rose. There as I pass’d, with careless steps and slow, The mingled notes came soften’d from below; The swain responsive as the milk-maid sung, The sober herd that low’d to meet their young, The noisy geese that gabbled o’er the pool, The playful children just let loose from school, The watch-dog’s voice, that bay’d the whispering wind, And the loud laugh that spoke the vacant mind-- These all in sweet confusion sought the shade, And fill’d each pause the nightingale had made. But now the sounds of population fail, No cheerful murmurs fluctuate in the gale, No busy steps the grass-grown footway tread, For all the bloomy flush of life is fled-- All but yon widow’d, solitary thing, That feebly bends beside the plashy spring; She, wretched matron, forc’d in age, for bread, To strip the brook with mantling cresses spread, To pick her wintry faggot from the thorn, To seek her nightly shed, and weep till morn-- She only left of all the harmless train, The sad historian of the pensive plain! [Illustration]