PREFACE

AUTUMN. ARGUMENT.

Title: The Farmer's Boy A Rural Poem

Author: Robert Bloomfield

Language: English

Produced by Jonathan Ingram, Charles Bidwell and Distributed Proofreaders

[Illustration]

THE FARMER'S BOY;

A RURAL POEM.

By ROBERT BLOOMFIELD.

"A SHEPHERD'S BOY … HE SEEKS NO BETTER NAME."

The Third Edition

LONDON:
Printed for Vernor and Hood, Poultry
and sold by T.C. Rickman, 7, Upper Mary-Le-Bone-Street;
Ingram, and Dingle, Bury; Booth, Norwich; Hill, Edinburgh;
Archer, and Dugdale, Dublin.

MDCCC

A sonnet has come to my hands, the production,—and nearly the first poetical Production,—of a very young Lady. I have not the Author's consent to publish it: and there is no time to ask it. But I cannot omit adding such a flower to the Wreath of Glory of my Friend. I have therefore ventured to publish it without waiting permission; with one or two slight alterations.

C. L.

25 Aug. 1800.

TO THE AUTHOR OF THE FARMER'S BOY.

I.

If wealth, if honour, at command were mine,
  And every boast Ambition could desire,
The pompous Gifts, sweet Bard, I would resign
  For the aft Music of thy tuneful Lyre,

II.

Which speaks the soul awake to every charm
  That Nature open'd from thy humble cot:
Speaks powers chill Indigence could not disarm;
  Proof to Humanity's severest lot.

III.

Thou Friend to Nature, and of Man the Friend;
  Of every generous and benignant cause;
The accents of thy glowing worth, unfeign'd,
  Live in the cadence of each feeling pause.
Here thought, alternate, in the noble Plan
Admires the POET, and reveres the Man.

25 Aug. 1800.