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C.N. Douglas, comp. Forty Thousand Quotations: Prose and Poetical. 1917.

Villagers

  • Suburban villas, highway-side retreats,
  • That dread th’ encroachments of our growing streets,
  • Tight boxes neatly sash’d, and in a blaze
  • With all a July sun’s collected rays,
  • Delight the citizen, who gasping there,
  • Breathes clouds of dust, and calls it country air.
  • O sweet retirement, who would balk the thought
  • That could afford retirement, or could not?
  • ’Tis such an easy walk, so smooth and straight,—
  • The second milestone fronts the garden gate;
  • A step if fair, and if a shower approach
  • You find safe shelter in the next stagecoach,
  • There prison’d in a parlor snug and small,
  • Like bottled wasps upon a southern wall,
  • The man of business and his friends compress’d,
  • Forget their labors, and yet find no rest;
  • But still ’tis rural,—trees are to be seen
  • From every window, and the fields are green.
  • Cowper.

  • The villager, born humbly and bred hard,
  • Content his wealth, and poverty his guard,
  • In action simply just, in conscience clear,
  • By guilt untainted, undisturb’d by fear,
  • His means but scanty, and his wants but few,
  • Labor his business, and his pleasure too,
  • Enjoys more comforts in a single hour
  • Than ages give the wretch condemn’d to power.
  • Churchill.