The poem opens with a description of a village named Auburn, written in the past tense.
Sweet Auburn! loveliest village of the plain;
Where health and plenty cheered the labouring swain,
Where smiling spring its earliest visit paid,
And parting summer's lingering blooms delayed (lines 1–4).
The poem then moves on to describe the village in its current state, reporting that it has been abandoned by its residents with its buildings ruined.
Sunk are thy bowers in shapeless ruin all,
And the long grass o'ertops the mouldering wall;
And trembling, shrinking from the spoiler's hand,
Far, far away thy children leave the land
Ill fares the land, to hastening ills a prey,
Where wealth accumulates, and men decay (lines 47–52)
After nostalgic descriptions of Auburn's parson, schoolmaster and alehouse, Goldsmith makes a direct attack on the usurpation of agricultural land by the wealthy:
... The man of wealth and pride
Takes up a space that many poor supplied;