The Deserted Village | Quotes

This, the opening line of the poem, exemplifies the speaker's sentimentality. The village he describes in the following lines is faultless, pure, and unspoiled.

This line is an example of the speaker's rose-colored view of rural life. He presents images of healthy young men ("swains") who long for nothing. Even though farming and small-town life is not all innocence and prosperity, portraying it as such drives home the speaker's point.

An image of the "tyrant's hand" creeps into the picturesque village scene. The villagers have no choice but to leave their homes, taking their morality and "charms" with them.

The speaker sees a direct link between industrialization—machines, factories, and corporations—and human suffering and death.

The speaker directly links the actions of the wealthy—through unmentioned Enclosure Acts and labor exploitation—with the decreased living quality of the poor.

This line explains the speaker's views on the Enclosure Acts, which he believed pushed the hardworking poor off their land to the benefit of the wealthy.

While the rich use excess land to expand their recreational space, such as for a garden, it pushes the starving poor into their graves and thrives off their death.

In the city everyone takes advantage of each other to line their own pockets. The speaker describes two unsavory characters on the street hustling to make money off their fellow man.

The speaker describes the terrifying city where innocent villagers walk into certain exploitation or death. The city provides the perfect foil for the speaker's sentimentality. While the village is an image of unflawed beauty, the city is irredeemably evil.

As the poor are pushed from their land, they take their "rural virtues," or morality, with them. The speaker suggests that villagers are purely good and city dwellers are purely corrupt. As commercialism spreads across England, it stifles morality.