Lecture 26: Oliver Goldsmith’s The Deserted Village and Pastoral Sentiment

I. Oliver Goldsmith (1730-1774): Urban Bumpkin

A. An Irish Minister’s Son

B. Bottom of the Class

C. Hack Work

D. A Member of the Club

II. Major Works

A. The List of Works

1. Biography, The Life of Richard Nash, 1762

2. Poetry

1. The Traveller, 1764

2. The Deserted Village, 1770

3. Novel, The Vicar of Wakefield, 1766

4. Comedies

1. The Good Natured Man, 1768

2. She Stoops to Conquer, 1773

B. His Varied Career

III. The Enclosure Acts and Social Change

A. Rural to Urban Migration

B. The Rural Poor

C. The Urban Poor

D. The Criminal Class

IV. The Pastoral Tradition

A. Theocritus’s Idylls

B. Virgil’s Eclogues and Georgics

V. The Deserted Village

A. Dedication

B. Sweet Auburn!

1. “SWEET Auburn! loveliest village of the plain,

Where health and plenty cheer’d the labouring swain,

Where smiling Spring its earliest visit paid,

And parting Summer’s lingering blooms delay’d;

Dear lovely bowers of innocence and ease,

Seats of my youth, when every sport could please:

How often have I loiter’d o’er thy green,

Where humble happiness endear’d each scene!

How often have I paused on every charm,

The shelter’d cot, the cultivated farm,

The never-failing brook, the busy mill,

The decent church that topp’d the neighbouring hill;

The hawthorn bush, with seats beneath the shade,

For talking age and whispering lovers made!”

C. “Thy Charms Withdrawn”

1. Sweet smiling village, loveliest of the lawn,

Thy sports are fled, and all thy charms withdrawn;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 grasps the whole domain,

And half a tillage stints thy smiling plain.

 No more thy glassy brook reflects the day,

But, choked with sedges, works its weedy way.

2. Ill fares the land, to hastening ills a prey,

Where wealth accumulates, and men decay.

Princes and lords may flourish, or may fade;

A breath can make them, as a breath has made:

But a bold peasantry, their country’s pride,

When once destroy’d, can never be supplied.

D. “I still had hopes”

1. In all my wanderings through this world of care, ‘

In all my griefs—and God has given my share—

I still had hopes, my latest hours to crown,

 Amidst these humble bowers to lay me down;

To husband out life’s taper at the close,

And keep the flame from wasting, by repose:

I still had hopes, for pride attends us still,

Amidst the swains to show my book-learn’d skill,

Around my fire an evening group to draw,

And tell of all I felt, and all I saw;

And, as a hare, whom hounds and horns pursue,

Pants to the place from whence at first she flew, I

 still had hopes, my long vexations past,

 Here to return—and die at home at last.

E. “O luxury!”

1. And thou, sweet Poetry, thou loveliest maid

Still first to fly where sensual joys invade!

Unfit, in these degenerate times of shame,

To catch the heart, or strike for honest fame;

Dear charming nymph, neglected and decried,

My shame in crowds, my solitary pride;

Thou source of all my bliss and all my woe,

That found’st me poor at first, and keep’st me so;

Thou guide by which the nobler arts excel,

Thou nurse of every virtue, fare thee well!

2. That Trade’s proud empire hastes to swift decay,

As ocean sweeps the labour’d mole away;

While self-dependent power can time defy

As rocks resist the billows and the sky.