"As on their neighbouring beach yon swallows stand
And wait for favouring winds to leave the land;
While still for flight the ready wing is spread:
So waited I the favouring hour, and fled;
Fled from those shores where guilt and famine reign,
And cried, 'Ah! hapless they who still remain--
Who still remain to hear the ocean roar;
Whose greedy waves devour the lessening shore;
Till some fierce tide, with more imperious sway,
Sweeps the low hut and all it holds away;
When the sad tenant weeps from door to door,
And begs a poor protection from the poor!"

Burke might well have been impressed by such a passage. In some other
specimens of Crabbe's verse, submitted at the same time to his judgment,
the note of a very different school was dominant. But here for the
moment appears a fresher key and a later model. In the lines just quoted
the feeling and the cadence of _The Traveller_ and _The Deserted
Village_ are unmistakable. But if they suggest comparison with the
exquisite passage in the latter beginning--

"And as the hare, whom hounds and horns pursue,
Pants to the place from which it first she flew,"

they also suggest a contrast. Burke's experienced eye would detect that
if there was something in Crabbe's more Pope-like couplets that was not
found in Pope, so there was something here more poignant than even in
Goldsmith.

Crabbe's son reflected with just pride that there must have been