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The Poems of Oliver Goldsmith

Chapter 63: FOOTNOTES:
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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.

ON THE DEATH
OF THE RIGHT HON. ——.60

Ye muses, pour the pitying tear,
For Pollio snatch’d away;
Oh! had he liv’d another year—
He had not died to-day.
Oh! were he born to bless mankind,
In virtuous times of yore,
Heroes themselves had fall’n behind—
Whene’er he went before.
How sad the groves and plains appear,
And sympathetic sheep;
Even pitying hills would drop a tear—
If hills could learn to weep.
His bounty in exalted strain
Each bard might well display,
Since none implor’d relief in vain—
That went reliev’d away.
And, hark! I hear the tuneful throng
His obsequies forbid;
He still shall live, shall live as long—
As ever dead man did.

FOOTNOTES:

60 A burlesque elegy.