ENCLOSURES: THE DESERT VILLAGE    BY O. GOLDSMITH (1770)

Le enclosures costrinsero molti contadini inglesi ad abbandonare i campi e a recarsi nelle città in cerca di lavoro. Le campagne desolate e il decadimento della vita rurale ispirarono molti scrittori del tempo. Uno dei testi più famosi è sicuramente quello di Oliver Goldsmith, del quale qui sotto ne è proposta un spezzone significativo.

Sweet smiling village, loveliest of the lown,
Thy sports are fled and all thy charms withdrawn;
Amidst Thy bowser the tyrant's hand is seen,
And desolation saddens all thy green:
One only master grasps the whole domain,
And half a tillage stints thy smiling plain:
No more thy glassy brook reflects the day,
But, choked with sedges, works its weedy way.
Along thy glades, a solitary guest,
The hollow-sounding bittern guards its nest;
Amidst thy desert walks the lapwing flies,
And tires their echoes with unvaried cries.
Sunk are thy bowers in shareless ruin all,
And the long grass o'ertops the mouldering wall;
And trembling, shrinking from the spoiler's hand,
Far, far away, thy children leave the land.

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                       (from The poems of Th.Gray, W.Collins, O. Goldsmith, edited by R. Lonsdale, Longman, 1980).