What is the pastoral elegy by Oliver Goldsmith?

The Deserted Village is the pastoral elegy written by Oliver Goldsmith who lived in England during the years 1728 to 1774. It weeps the death of not a person but the gradual death of a whole village and the saying farewell by virtues one by one from the land. It is a very long poem. It is the ideal poem that taught the world how to feel with heart and weep with eyes. The following are a few lines from the poem:

But times are altered; trade's unfeeling train

Usurp the land and disposes the swain;

Along the lawn, where scattered hamlets rose,

Unwieldy wealth and cumbrous pomp repose.

Princes and lords may flourish, or may fade;

A breath can make them, as a breath has made;

But a bold peasantry, their country's pride,

When once destroyed, can never be supplied.

Even now, methinks, as pondering here I stand,

I see the rural virtues leave the land.

Downward they move, a melancholy band,

Pass from the shore, and darken all the strand.