The Rising Village was published in The poet feels rather nostalgic as he falls into reminiscences of early years. He had preoccupied himself with boyish sports in those days and loitered in the verderous and charming countryside. The countryside was a familiar resort for old and young alike. A change for the worse takes place.
Small peasants are the losers of their farms as one big landlord usurps them all. The veritable paradise that the countryside was, was ruined.
Depopulation of peasants thus led to the desolation of the village. Goldsmith believes that tampering with tillage and peasantry will incur a permanent national loss. Peasanty, therefore, should not be destroyed or displaced at any cost. The bucolic scenario has undergone a drastic change! The rural spectacle has turned rurarban and would-be urban very soon.
The peasants before the process burgeoning began, were very complacent and innocent people. They were ignorant of mercenary motives. It is not unusual that Gray and Goldsmith as brilliant contemporaries strike similar notes.
But the change has destroyed all that was happy, innocent and healthy. What remains is desolation and ruined hamlet. No cheerful murmurs fluctuate in the gale,. It is a pathetic scene of desolation, ruin and depopulation. The poet becomes the painter of human suffering caused by penury. It has been amply illustrated in The Deserted Village. The poet introduces the village preacher. It is really very surprising how perfectly Goldsmith imitates Chaucer.
The village preacher of The Deserted Village is a true Christian. He has compassion, mercy, the sentiment of selfless service. His heart goes out for the wretched, invalid and unfortunate people. What Jesus Christ was to lepers, the village preacher was to the suffering natives of the place.
He went out of the way to console and comfort them and enlightened them as a paragon of virtues- his personality was ideally compatible with his religious and spiritual preoccupations. The welfare of the suffering wretches pleased him beyond measure.
Though round its breast the rolling clouds are spread, The eternal sunshine settles on its head. The portrayal of the village master follows immediately after that of the village preacher.
The passage chosen for this week's poem is the best-known of those portraits. It provides an affectionate, humorous moment of respite from the surging emotions that carry the poem on its flood-tide of nostalgia, lamentation and invective. Goldsmith's "Sweet Auburn! The poet is blending recollections of the Irish village of his boyhood, Lissoy, and the fruits of his more recent travels through the villages of England, which had undergone similar enclosures and depopulation.
Goldsmith's political argument is also a moral one, and the "shapeless ruin" he sees in the landscape reflects the decadence produced by the pursuit of luxury. So, in the second line of the extract, we have the telling description of the furze blossom as "unprofitably gay". The school-master is a partly comic figure, but he too values something besides profit: learning.
We are invited to see him through the villagers' eyes. The parson probably considers him a windbag. Others naively admire him for unexceptional skills such as the ability "to write, and cipher, too".
However, some of those listed qualifications are practical and worth passing on, and there seems no irony in the claim that "Lands he could measure, terms and tides presage.
The next section introduces the village pub, and its details are recounted with much charm. The accumulating wealth of the present leads to human decay. These gentle hours that plenty bade to bloom, Those calm desires that asked but little room, Those healthful sports that graced the peaceful scene. The speaker next mourns the loss of a peaceful retirement, as his late life stage fills him with concerns. This allows Goldsmith not merely to praise the preacher with gushing hyperbole, but to make his case that no such individual exists among the grasping group that displaced the preacher and those to whom he ministered.
While words of learned length, and thundering sound, Amazed the gazing rustics ranged around; And still they gazed, and still the wonder grew, That one small head could carry all he knew.
The nostalgic tone proves touching as well as moving, causing the reader to remember his own home. Some move to the city, where they find only work at a trade that cannot support them, and they suffer mightily.
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