While many a pastime circled in the shade,
The young contending as the old surveyed;
And many a gambol frolicked o'er the ground,
And sleights of art and feats of strength went round.

4. And still, as each repeated pleasure tired,
Succeeding sports the mirthful band inspired;
The dancing pair, that simply sought renown
By holding out to tire each other down;
The swain, mistrustless of his smutted face,
While secret laughter tittered round the place;
The bashful virgin's sidelong looks of love,

The matron's glance that would those looks reprove.

5. These were thy charms, sweet village! sports like these,

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,
Thy sports are fled, and all thy charms withdrawn;
Amid 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.

6. 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;
Amid thy desert walks the lapwing flies,
And tires their echoes with unvaried cries;
Sunk are thy bowers in shapeless ruin all,
And the long grass o'ertops the moldering wall;

And, trembling, shrinking from the spoiler's hand,
Far, far away thy children leave the land.

7. 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 destroyed, can never be supplied.
A time there was, ere England's griefs began,
When every rood of ground maintained its man;
For him, light labor spread her wholesome store,
Just gave what life required, but gave no more;
His best companions, innocence and health;
And his best riches, ignorance of wealth.

8. But times are altered: trade's unfeeling train
Usurp the land and dispossess the swain ;
Along the lawn, where scattered hamlets rose,
Unwieldy wealth and cumbrous pomp repose,
And every want to opulence allied,

And every pang that folly pays to pride.

Those gentle hours that plenty bade to bloom,
Those calm desires that asked but little room,
Those healthful sports that graced the peaceful scene,
Lived in each look and brightened all the green;
These, far departing, seek a kinder shore,

And rural mirth and manners are no more.

9. Sweet was the sound, when oft, at evening's close, Up yonder hill the village murmur rose.

There, as I passed with careless steps and slow,
The mingled notes came softened from below:
The swain responsive as the milkmaid sung;
The sober herd that lowed to meet their young;

The noisy geese that gabbled o'er the pool;
The playful children just let loose from school;
The watchdog's voice that bayed the whispering wind,
And the loud laugh that spoke the vacant mind-
These, all in sweet confusion, sought the shade,
And filled each pause the nightingale had made.

10. But now the sounds of population fail;
No cheerful murmurs fluctuate in the gale;
No busy steps the grass-grown footway tread,
For all the bloomy flush of life is fled.
All but yon widowed, solitary thing,
That feebly bends beside the plashy spring:
She, wretched matron, forced in age, for bread,
To strip the brook with mantling cresses spread,
To pick her wintry fagot from the thorn,
To seek her nightly shed, and weep till morn-
She, only, left of all the harmless train,

The sad historian of the pensive plain.

Oliver Goldsmith.

FOR PREPARATION.-I. Where was "Auburn"? (The village of Lishoy, or Lissoy, in Westmeath County, Ireland, six miles north of Athlone.) Whose work was its destruction? ("General Napier turned all of his tenants out of their farms, that he might inclose them in his own private domain." See note to Chapter XXVIII. of Irving's "Goldsmith.") Who afterward restored it, and why? (Captain Hogan, its present possessor, fired with an antiquarian spirit, has restored everything so as to correspond exactly to Goldsmith's description.) Where is the hawthorn bush found? "The hollow-sounding bittern."

II. Neigh'-bor-ing (nã'ber-), sur-veyed' (-väd'), sleights (shits), bus'-y (biz'zy), ty-rant's, sědg'-eş (sěj ́-), sof'-tened (sŏf′nd).

III. Explain est in loveliest; why not lovelyest? (Y would have a consonant sound.) What other ways of spelling blest (3) and past (9)?

IV. Swain, loitered, mistrustless, tillage, prey, peasantry, usurp, dispossess, hamlet, unwieldy, opulence, allied, "every pang that folly pays to pride," rural, fluctuate, pensive, "decent" (i. e., becoming) church.

V. What are “lingering blooms"? What contrast does the poet paint between Auburn as it was and as it is? To what does he attribute the change? What occasioned the titter of "secret laughter" (4)? Transpose into prose (adding words of your own where needed) the 7th stanza, to "supplied." Note the rhyme (9) “wind” and “mind." Name other pieces in which the nightingale (9) is spoken of. (It is not found in Ireland.)

LXX. THE VALLEY OF HUMILIATION.

1. Now they began to go down the hill into the Valley of Humiliation. It was a steep hill, and the way was slippery; but they were very careful, so they got down pretty well. When they were down in the valley, Piety said to Christiana: "This is the place where Christian, your husband, met with that foul fiend Apollyon, and where they had that dreadful fight that they had. I know you can not but have heard thereof. But be of good courage as long as you have here Mr. Greatheart to be your guide and conductor, we hope you will fare the better." So, when these two had committed the pilgrims unto the conduct of their guide, he went forward, and they went after.

2. Then said Mr. Greatheart: "We need not be so afraid of this valley, for here is nothing to hurt us, unless we procure it ourselves. 'Tis true, Christian did here meet with Apollyon, with whom he also had a sore combat; but that fray was the fruit of those slips that he got in his going down the hill; for they that get slips there must look for combats here. And hence it is that this valley has got so hard a name; for the common people, when they hear that some frightful thing has befallen such a one in such a place, are of opinion that that place is haunted with some foul fiend or evil spirit; when, alas !

it is for the fruit of their own doings that such things do befall them there.

3. "This Valley of Humiliation is of itself as fruitful a place as any the crow flies over; and I am persuaded, if we could hit upon it, we might find somewhere hereabouts something that might give us an account why Christian was so hardly beset in this place."

4. Then said James to his mother: "Lo! yonder stands a pillar, and it looks as if something was written thereon; let us go and see what it is." So they went, and found there written: "Let Christian's slip, before he came hither, and the battles that he met with in this place, be a warning to those that come after." "Lo!" said their guide, "did not I tell you that there was something hereabouts that would give intimation of the reason why Christian was so hard beset in this place?" Then turning himself to Christiana, he said: "No disparagement to Christian more than to many others whose hap and lot it was; for it is easier going up than down this hill; and that can be said but of a few hills in all these parts of the world. But we will leave the good man; he is at rest. He also had a brave victory over his enemy. Let Him grant, that dwelleth above, that we fare no worse when we come to be tried than he!

5. "But we will come again to this Valley of Humiliation. It is the best and most fruitful piece of ground in all these parts. It is fat ground, and, as you see, consisteth much in meadows; and if a man was to come here in summer time, as we do now, if he knew not anything before thereof, and if he also delighted himself in the sight of his eyes, he might see that which would be delightful to him. Behold how green this valley is! also how beau