...inhabitants are particularized, and their misery is shared. His subject is not pastoral ease but rural work: "What labour yields, and what, that labour past, / Age, in its hour of languor, finds at last" (3-4). The village is an economic entity, governed by rudimentary laws the science of which, with Adam...

...elle-meme: 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 forms the real picture of the poor, Demands a song - The Muse can give no more. Fled are those times,...

...composed in the tradition of Virgil's Eclogue 1 for offering an unrealistic picture of countryside life ("On Mincio's banks, in Caesar's bounteous reign,...found the Golden Age again, / Must sleepy bards the flattering dream prolong / Mechanic echoes of the Mantuan song?") he targeted only Tityrus but left...

...attitude: The Village Life, and every care that reigns O'er youthful peasants and declining swains; What labour yields, and what, that labour past, Age,...Poor, Demand a song — the Muse can give no more. Fled are those times, when, in harmonious strains, The rustic poet praised his native plains; No shepherds...

...r I ^HE Village Life, and every care that reigns _1_ O'er youthful peasants and declining swains ; What labour yields, and what, that labour past, Age,...poor, Demand a song — the Muse can give no more. Fled are those times when, in harmonious strains, The rustic poet praised his native plains. No shepherds...

...widely stray, Where Fancy leads, or Virgil led the way ? This, leaving but one line, Johnson altered to On Mincio's banks, in Caesar's bounteous reign, If...found the golden age again, Must sleepy bards the flattering dream prolong, Mechanick echoes of the Mantuan song ? From Truth and Nature shall we widely...