O blest retirement, friend to life’s decline,
  Retreats from care, that never must be mine,
  How happy he who crowns in shades like these
  A youth of labor with an age of ease; 100
  Who quits a world where strong temptations try,
  And, since ’t is hard to combat, learns to fly! 
  For him no wretches, born to work and weep,
  Explore the mine, or tempt the dangerous deep;
  No surly porter stands in guilty state,[3] 105
  To spurn imploring famine from the gate;
  But on he moves to meet his latter end,
  Angels around befriending Virtue’s friend;
  Bends to the grave with unperceived decay,
  While resignation gently slopes the way; 110
  And, all his prospects brightening to the last,
  His heaven commences ere the world be past!

  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, 115
  The mingling notes came softened from below;
  The swain responsive as the milk-maid 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, 120
  The watch-dog’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. 
  But now the sounds of population fail, 125
  No cheerful murmurs fluctuate in the gale,
  No busy steps the grass-grown foot-way tread,
  For all the bloomy flush of life is fled. 
  All but yon widowed, solitary thing,
  That feebly bends beside the plashy spring:  130
  She, wretched matron, forced in age, for bread,
  To strip the brook with mantling cresses spread,
  To pick her wintry faggot from the thorn,
  To seek her nightly shed, and weep till morn;
  She only left of all the harmless train, 135
  The sad historian of the pensive plain.

  Near yonder copse, where once the garden smiled,
  And still where many a garden flower grows wild;
  There, where a few torn shrubs the place disclose,
  The village preacher’s modest mansion rose.[11] 140
  A man he was to all the country dear,
  And passing[12] rich with forty pounds a year;
  Remote from towns he ran his godly race,
  Nor e’er had changed, nor wished to change his place;
  Unpracticed he to fawn, or seek for power, 145
  By doctrines fashioned to the varying hour;[13]
  Far other aims his heart had learned to prize,
  More skilled to raise the wretched than to rise. 
  His house was known to all the vagrant train;
  He chid their wanderings but relieved their pain:  150
  The long-remembered beggar was his guest,