[...]Ye friends to truth, ye statesmen who survey 

The rich man's joys encrease, the poor's decay, 

'Tis yours to judge, how wide the limits stand 

Between a splendid and a happy land. 

Proud swells the tide with loads of freighted ore, 

And shouting Folly hails them from her shore; 

Hoards even beyond the miser's wish abound, 

And rich men flock from all the world around. 

Yet count our gains. This wealth is but a name 

That leaves our useful products still the same. 

Not so the loss. The man of wealth and pride 

Takes up a space that many poor supplied; 

Space for his lake, his park's extended bounds, 

Space for his horses, equipage, and hounds: 

The robe that wraps his limbs in silken sloth, 

Has robbed the neighbouring fields of half their growth; 

His seat, where solitary sports are seen, 

Indignant spurns the cottage from the green: 

Around the world each needful product flies, 

For all the luxuries the world supplies. [...]


[...]Where then, ah where, shall poverty reside, 

To scape the pressure of contiguous pride? 

If to some common's fenceless limits strayed, 

He drives his flock to pick the scanty blade, 

Those fenceless fields the sons of wealth divide, 

And ev'n the bare-worn common is denied. 

If to the city sped—What waits him there? 

To see profusion that he must not share; 

To see ten thousand baneful arts combined 

To pamper luxury, and thin mankind; 

To see those joys the sons of pleasure know, 

Extorted from his fellow-creature's woe.[...]