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Extreme old age had wasted thee away;
And left thee but a glimmering of the day;
Thy ears were deaf; and feeble were thy knees, —
I saw thee stagger in the summer breeze,
Too weak to stand against its sportive breath,
And ready for the gentlest stroke of death.
It came, and we were glad; yet tears were shed ;
Both Man and Woman wept when Thou wert dead;
Not only for a thousand thoughts that were,
Old household thoughts, in which thou hadst thy share;
But for some precious boons vouchsafed to thee,
Found scarcely any where in like degree!
For love, that comes to all - the holy sense,
Best gift of God – in thee was most intense;
A chain of heart, a feeling of the mind,
A tender sympathy, which did thee bind
Not only to us Men, but to thy Kind :
Yea, for thy Fellow-brutes in thee we saw
The soul of Love, Love's intellectual law:-
Hence, if we wept, it was not done in shame ;
Our tears from passion and from reason came,
And, therefore, shalt thou be an honoured name!

XIV.

In the School of is a Tablet, on which are inscribed, in gilt letters, the Names of the several Persons who have been Schoolmasters there since the Foundation of the School, with the Time at which they entered upon and quitted their Office. Opposite one of those Names the Author wrote the following Lines.

IF Nature, for a favourite Child
In thee hath tempered so her clay,
That every hour thy heart runs wild,
Yet never once doth go astray,

Read o'er these lines; and then review

This tablet, that thus humbly rears

In such diversity of hue

Its history of two hundred years.

When through this little wreck of fame,
Cipher and syllable! thine eye

Has travelled down to Matthew's name,

Pause with no common sympathy.

And, if a sleeping tear should wake,
Then be it neither checked nor stayed:
For Matthew a request I make
Which for himself he had not made.

Poor Matthew, all his frolics o'er,
Is silent as a standing pool;
Far from the chimney's merry roar,
And murmur of the village school.

The sighs which Matthew heaved were sighs
Of one tired out with fun and madness;
The tears which came to Matthew's eyes
Were tears of light, the dew of gladness.

Yet, sometimes, when the secret cup
Of still and serious thought went round,
It seemed as if he drank it up
He felt with spirit so profound.

- Thou Soul of God's best earthly mould!

Thou happy Soul! and can it be

That these two words of glittering gold

Are all that must remain of thee?

XV.

THE TWO APRIL MORNINGS.

We walked along, while bright and red

Uprose the morning sun;

And Matthew stopped, he looked, and said, "The will of God be done!"

A village Schoolmaster was he,
With hair of glittering gray;
As blithe a man as you could see
On a spring holiday.

And on that morning, through the grass,
And by the steaming rills,

We travelled merrily, to pass

A day among the hills.

" Our work," said I, " was well begun; Then, from thy breast what thought, Beneath so beautiful a sun,

So sad a sigh has brought?"

A second time did Matthew stop;
And fixing still his eye
Upon the eastern mountain-top,
To me he made reply :

" Yon cloud with that long purple cleft

Brings fresh into my mind

A day like this which I have left
Full thirty years behind.

" And just above yon slope of corn
Such colours, and no other,
Were in the sky, that April morn,
Of this the very brother.

" With rod and line I sued the sport Which that sweet season gave,

And, coming to the church, stopped short Beside my daughter's grave.

" Nine summers had she scarcely seen,

The pride of all the vale;

And then she sang; - she would have been A very nightingale.

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