“One only master grasps the whole domain, And half a tillage stints thy smiling plain.

* * * * * *

Ill fares the land to hastening ills a prey: Where wealth accumulates and men decay: Princes or lords may flourish or may fade; A breath can make them as a breath has made; But a bold peasantry, their country’s pride, When once destroy’d can never be supply’d.

* * * * * *

A time there was ere England’s griefs began; When every rood of ground maintained its man; But times are alter’d, trade’s unfeeling train Usurp the land, and dispossess the swain.”

Goldsmith: The Deserted Village

Other excerpts from this poem appear in Crosby’s Calendar, but this one does not. I hereby add it!