If I were not thus taught, should I the more For thou art with me here upon the banks Shall e'er prevail against us, or disturb Thy memory be as a dwelling-place For all sweet sounds and harmonies; oh! then, If solitude, or fear, or pain, or grief, Should be thy portion, with what healing thoughts Of tender joy wilt thou remember me, And these my exhortations! Nor, perchance If I should be where I no more can hear Thy voice, nor catch from thy wild eyes these gleams Of past existence-wilt thou then forget That on the banks of this delightful stream We stood together; and that I, so long A worshipper of Nature, hither came THE OLD CUMBERLAND BEGGAR. Comp. 1798. Pub. 1798. The class of Beggars to which the Old Man here described belongs will probably soon be extinct. It consisted of poor, and mostly old and infirm persons, who confined themselves to a stated round in their neighbourhood, and had certain fixed days, on which, at different houses, they regularly received alms, sometimes in money, but mostly in provisions. [Observed, and with great benefit to my own heart, when I was a child. Written at Racedown and Alfoxden in my twenty-third year. The Political Economists were about that time beginning their war upon mendicity in all its forms, and by implication, if not directly, on alms-giving also. This heartless process has been carried as far as it can go by the AMENDED Poor Law Bill, tho' the inhumanity that prevails in this measure is somewhat disguised by the profession that one of its objects is to throw the poor upon the voluntary donations of their neighbours; that is, if rightly interpreted, to force them into a condition between relief in the Union Poor House and Alms robbed of their Christian grace and spirit, as being forced rather from the avaricious and selfish: and all, in fact, but the humane and charitable are at liberty to keep all they possess from their distressed brethren.] I saw an aged Beggar in my walk; And he was seated by the highway side, Built at the foot of a huge hill, that they Upon the second step of that small pile, Him from my childhood have I known; and then He was so old, he seems not older now; He travels on, a solitary Man, So helpless in appearance, that for him The sauntering horseman throws not with a slack1 The sauntering horseman-traveller does not throw 1800. Watches the aged Beggar with a look 1 Shouts to him from behind; and, if thus warned 2 Upon his lips, or anger at his heart. He travels on, a solitary Man; His age has no companion. On the ground Of fields with rural works, of hill and dale, Impressed on the white road,—in the same line, His staff trails with him; scarcely do his feet But deem not this Man useless.-Statesmen! ye Who are so restless in your wisdom, ye Who have a broom still ready in your hands To rid the world of nuisances; ye proud, Heart-swoln, while in your pride ye contemplate Your talents, power, or wisdom, deem him not A burthen of the earth! 'Tis Nature's law That none, the meanest of created things, Of forms created the most vile and brute, The dullest or most noxious, should exist Divorced from good-a spirit and pulse of good, A life and soul, to every mode of being Inseparably linked. Then be assured That least of all can aught-that ever owned The heaven-regarding eye and front sublime Which man is born to-sink, howe'er depressed, So low as to be scorned without a sin; Without offence to God cast out of view; Like the dry remnant of a garden-flower Whose seeds are shed, or as an implement Worn out and worthless.1 While from door to door 1 From "then be assured" to "worthless" added in 1836. |