Introduced by Vona Groarke
Illustrations by Blaise Drummond

'Ill fares the land, to hastening ills a prey,
where wealth accumulates, and men decay.'

The Deserted Village is an unusual classic of Irish literature: it is both admired and loved. Oliver Goldsmith (1728-1774) fleshes out in resounding couplets his 'loveliest village', the humble happiness and repeated pleasures of its 'labouring swains'.

His portraits of the matron, 'sad historian of the pensive plain', of the village preacher, a pious man 'more skilled to raise the wretched than to rise' and — above all -- of the schoolmaster are parts of people's lives, people who, literally, took them to heart.

But Goldsmith's thoughtful lines are also a chronicle of change — 'these charms are fled', 'the tyrant's hand is seen'. They comprise a study of fall and loss, the erosion of self-dependence and of the value of continuity in rural life. They record the extortions of the rich and emigrations of the poor.

The poem's enduring virtues and particular modern relevance are amply demonstrated in the responses of two of Ireland's most vital younger artists.

Vona Groarke was born in 1964 in County Longford and grew up 'two fields away from Lissoy parsonage'. Her three collections of poems, Shale, Other People's Houses and Flight (shortlisted for the Forward Prize), and her criticism make her a crucial contributor to Irish poetry.

Blaise Drummond was born in 1967 and now lives in County Longford. With its delicate strokes and quixotic humour, his art's attention to the effects of man's revision of landscape and the environment is a necessary perspective.

More than two hundred and fifty years after its appearance The Deserted Village continues to delight and to instruct, its prophecies to ring true.