There, while above the giddy tempest flies,
And all around distressful yells arise,
The pensive exile, bending with his wo,
To stop too fearful, and too faint to go,
Casts a long look where England's glories shine,
And bids his bosom sympathise with mine.

Vain, very vain, my weary search to find,
That bliss which only centres in the mind!
Why have I stray'd from pleasure and repose,
To seek a good each government bestows?
In every government, though terrors reign,
Though tyrant kings or tyrant laws restrain,
How small of all that human hearts endure,
That part which laws or kings can cause or cure!

Still to ourselves in every place consign'd,
Our own felicity we make or find.

With secret course, which no loud storms annoy,
Glides the smooth current of domestic joy;
The lifted axe, the agonising wheel,

Zeck's iron crown, and Damien's bed of steel,
To men remote from power but rarely known,
Leave reason, faith, and conscience, all our own.

* One of two brothers who headed an insurrection in Hungary in 1514. He was seized and sentenced to the punishment of the red hot iron crown.

I can have no expectations in an address of this kind either to add to your reputation or to establish my own. You can gain nothing from my admiration, as I am ignorant of that art in which you are said to excel; and I may lose much by the severity of your judgment, as few have a juster taste in poetry than you. Setting interest therefore aside, to which I never paid much attention, I must be indulged at present in following my affections. The only dedication I ever made was to my brother, because I loved him better than most other men. He is since dead. Permit me to inscribe this Poem to you.

How far you may be pleased with the versification and mere mechanical parts of this attempt, I do not pretend to inquire: but I know you will object (and indeed several of our best and wisest friends concur in the opinion), that the depopulation it deplores is nowhere to be seen, and the disorders it laments are only to be found in the poet's own imagination. To this I can scarcely make any other answer than that I sincerely believe what I have written; that I have taken all possible pains, in my country excursions, for these four or five years past, to be certain of what I allege; and that all my views and inquiries have led me to believe those miseries real which I here attempt to display. But this is not the place to enter into an inquiry whether the country be depopulating or not: the discussion would take

*First published in 1770.

up much room, and I should prove myself, at best, an indifferent politician to tire the reader with a long preface when I want his unfeigned attention to a long poem.

In regretting the depopulation of the country, I inveigh against the increase of our luxuries; and here also I expect the shout of modern politicians against me. For twenty or

thirty years past, it has been the fashion to consider luxury as one of the greatest national advantages, and all the wisdom of antiquity in that particular as erroneous. Still, however, I must remain a professed ancient on that head, and contiuue to think those luxuries prejudicial to states by which so many vices are introduced and so many kingdoms have been undone. Indeed, so much has been poured out of late on the other side of the question, that, merely for the sake of novelty and variety, one would sometimes wish to be in the right.

I am, dear Sir,

Your sincere friend and ardent admirer,

OLIVER GOLDSMITH.

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,
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 paused on every charm-
The shelter'd cot, the cultivated farm,
The never-failing brook, the busy mill,

The decent church that topt the neigbouring hill,
The hawthorn bush, with seats beneath the shade,
For talking age and whispering lovers made;

How often have I blest the coming day,

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,