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The Poems of Oliver Goldsmith

Chapter 4: ILLUSTRATIONS
By Oliver Goldsmith
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British LiteraturePoetry

About This Book

This collection assembles lyrical, narrative, and didactic poems that mix pastoral description, social observation, and satirical wit. Works move between reflective meditations on rural life and change, concise moral essays in verse, and light comic sketches, employing classical allusion, clear narrative, and a conversational voice. Themes include the displacement of village communities, the absurdities of fashion and ambition, and sympathy for ordinary experience, balanced by formal variety and humor. The edition is accompanied by an editorial preface and biographical notes that contextualize the poems and clarify language and references.

ILLUSTRATIONS

ENGRAVED BY EDMUND EVANS,
FROM DRAWINGS BY BIRKET FOSTER.

MILL AT LISSOY (Frontispiece).
  PAGE
GOLDSMITH’S TOMB IN THE TEMPLE CHURCHYARD xvii
THE TRAVELLER.
Or where Campania’s plain forsaken lies 5
Bless’d that abode, where want and pain repair 6
Even now, where Alpine solitudes ascend 7
Ye lakes, whose vessels catch the busy gale 8
The shuddering tenant of the frigid zone 9
Basks in the glare, or stems the tepid wave 10
While oft some temple’s mouldering tops between 12
In florid beauty groves and fields appear 13
A mistress or a saint in every grove 14
Where the bleak Swiss their stormy mansions tread 16
With patient angle trolls the finny deep 17
How often have I led thy sportive choir 18
The willow-tufted bank, the gliding sail 21
There gentle music melts on every spray 24
Where wild Oswego spreads her swamps around 27
THE DESERTED VILLAGE.
The never-failing brook, the busy mill 32
The shelter’d cot, the cultivated farm 33
And many a gambol frolick’d o’er the ground 34
The hollow-sounding bittern guards its nest 35
Where once the cottage stood, the hawthorn grew 37
The swain responsive as the milk-maid sung 38
And fill’d each pause the nightingale had made 39
To pick her wintry faggot from the thorn 40
The village preacher’s modest mansion rose 41
Thus to relieve the wretched was his pride 42
At church, with meek and unaffected grace 43
Low lies that house, where nut-brown draughts inspir’d 45
No more the farmer’s news, the barber’s tale 45
Space for his lake, his park’s extended bounds 48
Where the poor houseless, shivering female lies 50
Her modest looks the cottage might adorn 51
Where crouching tigers wait their hapless prey 52
The cooling brook, the grassy-vested green 53
And left a lover’s for a father’s arms 54
Downward they move, a melancholy band 56
THE HERMIT.
Then turn, to-night, and freely share whate’er my cell bestows 58
The hermit trimm’d his little fire, and cheer’d his pensive guest 61
And when, beside me in the dale; he caroll’d lays of love 64
THE CAPTIVITY.
Ye hills of Lebanon, with cedars crown’d 69
Fierce is the tempest rolling along the furrow’d main 74
As panting flies the hunted hind, where brooks refreshing stray 80
O Babylon! how art thou fall’n 83
THE HAUNCH OF VENISON 90
THE DOUBLE TRANSFORMATION 102
AN ELEGY ON THE DEATH OF A MAD DOG 109
THRENODIA AUGUSTALIS 116
ON A BEAUTIFUL YOUTH STRUCK BLIND BY LIGHTNING 125
SONG—“THE THREE PIGEONS” 130
BIRDS 142
EPILOGUE WRITTEN FOR MR. CHARLES LEE LEWES 162

The Ornamental Illustrations designed by H. Noel Humphreys