iend:
Bends to the grave with unperceived decay,
While resignation gently slopes the way;
And, all his prospects brightening to the last,
His Heaven commences ere the world be past!"

In simplicity Goldsmith equals Gray. There is a Miltonic dignity truly
classical in the line--

"The sad historian of the pensive plain."

Failures have been indicated in the literary construction of the
finest poems. Critics have held that Burns, in "The Cotter's Saturday
Night," lost the Scottish and gave the piece an English colour.

Macaulay contended that the deserted hamlet pictured by Goldsmith
was neither one thing nor the other, but first Irish and then
English. Criticism purely aesthetic cannot destroy the poignancy and
profoundness of the theme and throughout the touch of a master power.

From beginning to end the piece proceeds in a picturesque progress
which in its steady advancement and maintained dignity is splendidly
processional.

At last we come to the village pastor, and line after line, love leads
the light:

"A man he was to all the country dear,
And passing rich with forty pounds a year;
Remote from towns he ran his godly race,
Nor ere had changed, nor wished to change, his place."

"Far other aims his heart had learned to prize,
More skilled to raise the wretched than to rise."

"Pleased with his guests, the good man learned to glow,
And quite forgot their vices in their woe;
Careless their merits or their faults to scan,
His pity gave ere charity began."

"Truth from his lips prevailed with double sway,
And fools, who came to scoff, remained to pray."

This passage concludes in a fine strain, the finest in the poem:

"To them his heart, his love, his griefs, were given,
But all his serious thoughts had rest in Heaven.
As some tall cliff, that lifts its awful form,
Swells from the vale, and midway leaves the storm,
Though round its breast the rolling clouds are spread,
Eternal sunshine settles on its head."

Here is a transcendent radiance that has been held the most sublime
simile that language yields. Then, following with a most delicate
transition, we have the genial and gentle humour in the picture of
the pedagogue and his pupils, and then the village inn and the rustics
discussing news "much older than their ale."

Well may the sweetly chiding and chastening poet reflect,

"How wide the limits stand,
Between a splendid and a happy