Throughout the poem Goldsmith celebrates the extraordinary in the everyday realities of country life. His use of simple language accentuates the naturalness of the poem and perfectly suits the simple rural scene that it describes.
Dear lovely bowers of innocence and ease,
Seats of my youth, when every sport could please
…How often have I paus’d on every charm,
The shelter’d cot – the cultivated farm,
The never-failing brook – the busy mill,
The decent church that topt the neighbouring hill
Oliver Goldsmith does his best to let us believe we are in the presence of described place, of that beauty spot. He uses some very simple but successful devices for to help our imagination build a notion of a rural everyday life. He plays on sounds for complete picture formation:
Sweet was the sound when oft at evening’s close
Up yonder hill the village murmur rose;
There, as I passed with careless steps and slow,
The mingling notes came softened from below;
The swain responsive as the milkmaid sung,
The sober herd that lowed to meet their young,
The noisy geese that gabbled o’er the pool;
The playful children just let loose from school;
The watchdog’s voice that bayed with whisp’ring wind,
And the loud laugh that spoke the vacant mind;
Filling the scene with various sounds that we know very well, Oliver creates the atmosphere equal to natural. It seems that whether we have closed our eyes we see this picturesque value scented by author's talent. In a poem silence has negative connotations. In “The Deserted Village” Goldsmith laments the passing of sounds of community — lowing herds, playful children, barking dogs, etc., sounds that mark a healthily busy rural world. It enhances the perception of the whole poem.
Oliver Goldsmith uses other interesting devices as well for making us give oneself up to the rural landscapes and life. He utilizes unusual for us – old language:
Ye friends to truth, ye statesmen who survey
Beautiful comparisons appear here and there which we cannot but remark. Such an excellent and charming lyric came out of a man who had just nature around him. Oliver grew up in a poor family, all his values were just the Sky overhead and the Earth below. Surprising comparisons could come into the author’s mind – he compares the country to a young woman. When it was young and beautiful, it didn't need adornment. Now in its decay, all the adornment doesn't mask the corruption.
They have turned country into garden and grave.
In the poem the “sweet village” is associated with the sweet, sweet home where a peasant comes from and to, where he was born, where he got his name, where he lives, where he loves, where he “shall repair to sweet oblivion of his daily care”. This land is his longings, his shelter, everything he owns and cares. That is the main value he is proud of. The farewell with this place which is native to the heart is full of grief for common people:
Good Heaven! what sorrows gloom'd that parting day,
That call'd them from their native walks away;
When the poor exiles, every pleasure past,
Hung round their bowers, and fondly look'd their last,
And took a long farewell, and wish'd in vain
For seats like these beyond the western main,
Sights, sounds, colors, and textures are all vividly painted in words as an artist paints images on canvas. A writer imagines a story to be happening in a place that is rooted in his mind. The location of a story’s actions, along with the time in which it occurs, is the great power for attracting a reader.
In this poem the setting is created by specially poetical language which belongs to the group of Oliver’s individual characteristics. How many or how few details we learn is up to the author. Many authors leave a lot of these details up to the reader’s imagination so we can by ourselves invent any continuation we’d like to see:
Sweet smiling village, loveliest of the lawn,
Thy sports are fled, and all thy charms withdrawn
This description shows us the flourishing place, but then makes us to picture a decaying village which is as if compared with alive being. Later we enter the village itself and, eventually, conclude that barriers of class are prevailing –
Yes! let the rich deride, the proud disdain,
These simple blessings of the lowly train;
The lyric description of the nature here – “smiling spring”, “sweet village”, “seats beneath the shades”, “eternal sunshine” - not just adds an important dimension of meaning, but embodying the premises of poem’s theme. How come that inhabitants have to leave these astonishing places? Goldsmith is explaining that moneyed interests and political influence have taken over:
Ill fares the land, to hastening ills a prey,
Where wealth accumulates, and men decay
The author of the “Deserted Village” had pathetically displayed the anguish of his countrymen, on being forced, to quit their native plains. People whose ancestors had lived in an area for centuries suddenly found themselves jobless and homeless. Whole villages were emptied.
Those healthful sports that grac'd the peaceful scene,
Liv'd in each look, and brighten'd all the green,--
These, far departing, seek a kinder shore,
And rural mirth and manners are no more.
Oliver personifies the former beauties of the land and makes them as if emigrate along with the peasantry to new lands. “Sweet Auburn” is a dead town-ghost now. Again here we see allusion to his fondness for his native village of Lissoy. He dreamed of the idyllic simple and uncomplicated life.
Immediately after farewell come the solitary scenes of the lands which were left by their former owners. These are strengthened by comparisons with the earlier peaceful and beautiful descriptions:
Thither no more the peasant shall repair
To sweet oblivion of his daily care;
No more the farmer's news, the barber's tale,
No more the woodman's ballad shall prevail;
No more the smith his dusky brow shall clear,
Relax his pond'rous strength, and lean to hear;
Still the author doesn’t lose his style of simplicity and all including description:
And rural mirth and manners are no more
Here the author implies that the common people don’t grace the land as they did. There is no more happiness. When the land is reaped of its worth and the common people are left with nothing, the country is left with nothing.
Oliver himself reacts very painfully upon the state of things. His own memories of the native village help him to depict the rural life and at the same time make him go trhough this conflict of classes which is represented in the poem:
Where once the cottage stood, the hawthorn grew,
Remembrance wakes with all her busy train,
Swells at my breast, and turns the past to pain.
The simplicity of his lyric is an astonishing exhibition of an author’s talent to recapture the completeness of sensations. Goldsmith had hoped that the village would still exist as he remembers it frim the past:
I still had hopes,
the swains to show my book-learned skill,
Around my fire an
And tell of all I felt and all I saw;
He as if had hoped to gather a group of people to share his thoughts on his home town that once gave him joy and happiness.
His best companions, innocence and health;
And his best riches, ignorance of wealth
This phrase refers to the commmon people’s most prized possession. As long as a man has his health and is free from any guilt, that is all he needs. The common man or peasant is portayed as being ignorant to the idea of being wealthy. It is something they don’t have. It keeps them honest. This great portrayal along with the nature depicted with the highly poetical, highly lyrical language creates a feature of harmony in the poem.
But all the bloomy flush of life is fled:
All but yon widow'd, solitary thing,
That feebly bends beside the plashy spring
Here bloomy refers to the beauty or flower of youth; flowery or fool of bloom. Flush means full of life or spirit, lively and vigorous (Online Educational Dictionary). In this context, I believe, bloomy flush alludes to the youthfullness and beauty of life and a blooming spirit. The auhor describes a perfect shape of the nature with a shade of bitterness expressing his regret for the time that can never be retrieved.
Beside the bed where parting life was laid,
And sorrow, quilt, and pain, by turns dismayed
The Deserted Village ends with the emigration of the displaced inhabitants, the following extract indicates:
Even now, methinks, as pondering here I stand,
I see the rural virtues leave the land:
Down where yon anchoring vessel spreads the sail,
That idly waiting flaps with every gale
Downward they move a melancholy band,
Pass from the shore, and darken all the strand.
There is not a paragraph of The Deserted Village that does not give proof of the validity of Goldsmith’s poetic genius. As we read the poem, his talent gives us “eternal sunshine” by its nature sights and venerable places. We follow the “rolling clouds”, “whispered praise” and all the warmth expressed by the author in The Deserted Village.