SELECTIONS IN ENGLISH POETRY
Around the world each needful product flies,
For all the luxuries the world supplies:
While thus the land adorned for pleasure, all 285
In barren splendour feebly waits the fall.
As some fair female unadorned and plain,
Secure to please while youth confirms her reign,
Slights every borrowed charm that dress supplies,
Nor shares with art the triumph of her eyes: 290
But when those charms are passed, for charms #re 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 betrayed, 295
In nature's simplest charm at first arrayed;
But verging ro decline, its splendours rise,
Its vistas strike, its palaces surprise;
While scourged 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 contiguous pride ?
If to some common's fenceless limits strayed, 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.
If to the city sped—what waits him there?
To see*profusion that he must not share; 310
To see ten thousand baneful arts combined
To pamper lukury, and thin mankind;
To see those joys the sons of pleasure know
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