With sweet succession, taught even toil to please:
These round thy bowers their cheerful influence shed:
These were thy charms--but all these charms are fled.

Sweet smiling village, loveliest of the lawn,[2] 35
Thy sports are fled, and all thy charms withdrawn;
Amidst thy bowers the tyrant's hand is seen,
And desolation saddens all thy green:
One only master[3] grasps the whole domain,
And half a tillage stints thy smiling plain. 40
No more thy glassy brook reflects the day,
But, choked with sedges, works its weedy way;
Along thy glades, a solitary guest,
The hollow sounding bittern guards its nest;
Amidst thy desert walks the lapwing flies, 45
And tires their echoes with unvaried cries;
Sunk are thy bowers in shapeless ruin all,
And the long grass o'ertops the mouldering wall;
And trembling, shrinking from the spoiler's hand,
Far, far away thy children leave the land. 50

Ill fares the land, to hastening ills a prey,
Where wealth accumulates, and men decay:[4]
Princes and lords may nourish, or may fade;
A breath can make them, as a breath has made:[5]
But a bold peasantry, their country's pride, 55
When once destroyed, can never be supplied.

A time there was, ere England's griefs began,[6]
When every rood of ground maintained its man;