Deserted Village, The
The, a poem by Oliver Goldsmith, published in 1770. It is a composition of 430 lines in rhymed couplets, a form of poetry popular at that time. In it the poet first describes the village of Lissoy--the home of his childhood--as he remembers it; then in its present state, reduced to desolation by the usurpation of a wealthy landlord. The poem is simple and musical. It is full of feeling, expressed in graceful and harmonious language. The pictures of the village preacher and the schoolmaster are familiar.
The village preacher's modest mansion rose.
A man he was to all the country dear,
And passing rich with forty pounds a year;
Remote from towns he ran his godly race,
Nor e'er had changed, nor wished to change his place;
The village master taught his little school;
A man severe he was, and stern to view,
I knew him well, and every truant knew;
Well had the boding tremblers learned to trace
The day's disasters in his morning face;
Full well they laughed with counterfeited glee
At all his jokes, for many a joke had he;
Full well the busy whisper, circling round,
Conveyed the dismal tidings when he frowned;
Yet he was kind, or if severe in aught,
The love he bore to learning was in fault.
The village all declared how much he knew;
'Twas certain he could write, and cipher too;
Lands he could measure, terms and tides presage,
And even the story ran that he could gauge.
In arguing, too, the parson owned his skill,
For e'en though vanquished, he could argue still.
The Deserted Village describes, not a living and active, but a departed and vanished, existence, which the poet has looked upon, loved and prized,--once a rural paradise, a seat of plenty and content; now a decay; a thing of memory, round which fancy and feeling twine their golden, ever lengthening chain. . . . It is a mirror of the author's heart, of the fond pictures of early friends and early life forever sacred. Desolation has settled upon the haunts of his childhood, but imagination peoples the deserted spot anew, rebuilds its ruined haunts, carries us back to the season of natural pastimes, of simple joys in romantic seclusion.--Welsh.