Sleepers

Abstract

Goldsmith’s Deserted Village laments enclosure’s impact on an idealized rural community. Here, a preacher had once nurtured villagers because “Their welfare pleased him and their cares distressed,” and he indulged them: “Careless their merits or their faults to scan, / His pity gave ere charity began.”¹ “Careful to see the mantling bliss go round,” the likewise nurturing tavern “host” had once illustrated how “rural virtues” encompass “Contented toil and hospitable care” (248, 247, 398, 403). But such “virtues” have lost their former home: “Thither no more the peasant shall repair / To sweet oblivion of his daily care” (241–42). Goldsmith takes this disruption personally, having previously enjoyed his visits to the village: whereas Milton’s Adam and Eve had left their Eden “with wandring steps and slow,” he had frequented his “with careless steps and slow” (115).² Moreover, he had regarded it as an eventual haven from “this world of care,” in hopes now extinguished: “blest retirement, friend to life’s decline, / Retreats from care, that never must be mine” (83, 97–98). But the multiple losses mourned also include elements conveying the gulf between Goldsmith and the villagers among whom he had wished to retire: “the loud laugh that spoke the vacant mind” and other “Spontaneous joys, where nature has its play,” which “Lightly…frolic o’er the vacant mind” (122, 255, 257).