THE
VILLAGE
BOOK I.
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 prais'd his native plains;
No shepherds now in smooth alternate verse.
Their country's beauty or their nymphs' rehearse;
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.
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 prais'd his native plains;
No shepherds now in smooth alternate verse.
Their country's beauty or their nymphs' rehearse;
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.
