No longer truth, though shown in verse, disdain,
But own the Village Life a life of pain: 
I too must yield, that oft amid those woes
Are gleams of transient mirth and hours of sweet repose,
Such as you find on yonder sportive Green,
The ’squire’s tall gate and churchway-walk between;
Where loitering stray a little tribe of friends,
On a fair Sunday when the sermon ends: 
Then rural beaux their best attire put on,
To win their nymphs, as other nymphs are won: 
While those long wed go plain, and by degrees,
Like other husbands, quit their care to please. 
Some of the sermon talk, a sober crowd,
And loudly praise, if it were preach’d aloud;
Some on the labours of the week look round,
Feel their own worth, and think their toil renown’d;
While some, whose hopes to no renown extend,
Are only pleased to find their labours end. 
   Thus, as their hours glide on, with pleasure fraught
Their careful masters brood the painful thought;
Much in their mind they murmur and lament,
That one fair day should be so idly spent;
And think that Heaven deals hard, to tithe their store
And tax their time for preachers and the poor. 
   Yet still, ye humbler friends, enjoy your hour,
This is your portion, yet unclaim’d of power;
This is Heaven’s gift to weary men oppress’d,
And seems the type of their expected rest: 
But yours, alas! are joys that soon decay;
Frail joys, begun and ended with the day;
Or yet, while day permits those joys to reign,
The village vices drive them from the plain. 
   See the stout churl, in drunken fury great,
Strike the bare bosom of his teeming mate! 
His naked vices, rude and unrefined,
Exert their open empire o’er the mind;
But can we less the senseless rage despise,
Because the savage acts without disguise? 
   Yet here Disguise, the city’s vice, is seen,
And Slander steals along and taints the Green: 
At her approach domestic peace is gone,
Domestic broils at her approach come on;
She to the wife the husband’s crime conveys,
She tells the husband when his consort strays;
Her busy tongue, through all the little state,
Diffuses doubt, suspicion, and debate;
Peace, tim’rous goddess! quits her old domain,
In sentiment and song content to reign. 
   Nor are the nymphs that breathe the rural air
So fair as Cynthia’s, nor so chaste as fair: 
These to the town afford each fresher face,
And the clown’s trull receives the peer’s embrace;
From whom, should chance again convey her down,
The peer’s disease in turn attacks the clown. 
   Here too the ’squire, or ’squire-like farmer, talk,
How round their regions nightly pilferers walk;
How from their ponds the fish are borne, and all
The rip’ning treasures from their lofty wall;
How meaner rivals in their sports delight,
Just right enough to claim a doubtful right;