George Crabbe

“ 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 ”

“ The happy youth assumes the common strain,
A nymph his mistress and himself a swain;
With no sad scenes he clouds his tuneful prayer,
But all, to look like her, is painted fair.
I grant indeed that fields and flocks have charms,
For him that gazes or for him that farms ”

“ Thus groan the old, till, by disease opprest,
They taste a final woe, and then they rest.
Their's is yon house that holds the parish poor,
Whose walls of mud scarce bear the broken door;
There, where the putrid vapours flagging, play,
And the dull wheel hums doleful through the day;
There children dwell who know no parents' care,
Parents, who know no children's love, dwell there;
Heart-broken matrons on their joyless bed,
Forsaken wives and mothers never wed ”

“ O'ercome by labour and bow'd down by time,
Feel you the barren flattery of a rhyme?
Can poets sooth you, when you pine for bread,
By winding myrtles round your ruin'd shed?
Can their light tales your weighty griefs o'erpower,
Or glad with airy mirth the toilsome hour?
Lo! where the heath, with withering brake grown o'er,
Lends the light turf that warms the neighbouring poor ”

“ He mends the broken hedge with icy thorn.
"Why do I live, when I desire to be
"At once from life and life's long labour free?
"Like leaves in spring, the young are blown away,
"Without the sorrows of a slow decay;
"I, like yon wither'd leaf, remain behind,
"Nipt by the frost and shivering in the wind;
"There it abides till younger buds come on,
"As I, now all my fellow swains are gone;
"Then, from the rising generation thrust,
"It falls, like me, unnotic'd to the dust.
"These fruitful fields, these numerous flocks I see,
"Are others' gain, but killing cares to me ”

“ The wealth around them makes them doubly poor.
Or will you deem them amply paid in health,
Labour's fair child, that languishes with wealth?
Go then! and see them rising with the sun,
Through a long course of daily toil to run ”

“ To think a poor man's bones should lie unblest. [2]
↑ A pauper who, being nearly past his labour, is employed by different masters, for a length of time proportioned to their occupations. ↑ Some apology is due for the insertion of a circumstance by no means common: that it has been a subject for complaint in any place, is a sufficient reason for its being reckoned among the evils which may happen to the poor, and which must happen to them exclusively ”

“ Its power increases and its use improves;
While Plenty round its spacious waves bestow,
Still it flows on, and shall for ever flow.
↑ Lord Robert Manners, the youngest son of the Marquis of Granby and the Lady Frances Seymour, daughter of Charles Duke of Somerset, was born the 5th of February, 1758, and was placed with his brother, the late Duke of Rutland, at Eton-School, where he acquired, and ever after retained, a considerable knowledge of the classical authors. ”