811
For which we pray; and for the wants provide
Of sickness, accident, and helpless age.
Companions have I many; many friends,
Dependants, comforters-my wheel, my fire,
All day the house-clock ticking in mine ear,
The cackling hen, the tender chicken brood, 815
And the wild birds that gather round my porch.
This honest sheep-dog's countenance I read;
With him can talk; nor blush to waste a word
On creatures less intelligent and shrewd.
And if the blustering wind that drives the
clouds
820
Care not for me, he lingers round my door, And makes me pastime when our tempers suit;
But, above all, my thoughts are my support, My comfort:—would that they were oftener fixed 824
On what, for guidance in the way that leads
To heaven, I know, by my Redeemer taught.'
The Matron ended-nor could I forbear
To exclaim-O happy! yielding to the law
Of these privations, richer in the main !—
While thankless thousands are opprest and
clogged
830
By ease and leisure; by the very wealth
And pride of opportunity made poor;
While tens of thousands falter in their path,
And sink, through utter want of cheering light;
For you the hours of labour do not flag;
For you each evening hath its shining star,
And every sabbath-day its golden sun.'"
835
Yes!" said the Solitary with a smile That seemed to break from an expanding heart, The untutored bird may found, and so construct,
840
And with such soft materials line, her nest
Fixed in the centre of a prickly brake,
That the thorns wound her not; they only
guard.
Powers not unjustly likened to those gifts
Of happy instinct which the woodland bird 845
Shares with her species, nature's grace some-
times
Upon the individual doth confer,
Among her higher creatures born and trained
To use of reason. And, I own that, tired
Of the ostentatious world-a swelling stage 850
With empty actions and vain passions stuffed,
And from the private struggles of mankind
Hoping far less than I could wish to hope,
Far less than once I trusted and believed-
I love to hear of those, who, not contending 855
Nor summoned to contend for virtue's prize,
Miss not the humbler good at which they aim,
Blest with a kindly faculty to blunt
The edge of adverse circumstance, and turn
Into their contraries the petty plagues
And hindrances with which they stand beset.
In early youth, among my native hills,
I knew a Scottish Peasant who possessed
A few small crofts of stone-encumbered ground;
Masses of every shape and size, that lay
Scattered about under the mouldering walls
Of a rough precipice; and some, apart,
In quarters unobnoxious to such chance,
As if the moon had showered them down in
860
865
spite.
But he repined not. Though the plough was scared 870
By these obstructions, 'round the shady stones A fertilising moisture,' said the Swain,
Gathers, and is preserved; and feeding dews
And damps, through all the droughty summer day
From out their substance issuing, maintain 875
Herbage that never fails: no grass springs up
So green, so fresh, so plentiful, as mine!
But thinly sown these natures; rare, at least,
The mutual aptitude of seed and soil
That yields such kindly product. He, whose bed
880
Perhaps yon loose sods cover, the poor Pen
sioner
Brought yesterday from our sequestered dell
Here to lie down in lasting quiet, he,
If living now, could otherwise report
Of rustic loneliness: that grey-haired Orphan-
So call him, for humanity to him
No parent was-feelingly could have told,
In life, in death, what solitude can breed
Of selfishness, and cruelty, and vice;
Or, if it breed not, hath not power to cure. 890
-But your compliance, Sir! with our request
My words too long have hindered."
Undeterred,
895
Perhaps incited rather, by these shocks,
In no ungracious opposition given
To the confiding spirit of his own
Experienced faith, the reverend Pastor said,
Around him looking; "Where shall I begin?
Who shall be first selected from my flock
Gathered together in their peaceful fold?"
He paused-and having lifted up his eyes 900
To the pure heaven, he cast them down again
Upon the earth beneath his feet; and spake :-
"To a mysteriously-united pair
This place is consecrate; to Death and Life,
And to the best affections that proceed
From their conjunction; consecrate to faith
In him who bled for man upon the cross;
Hallowed to revelation; and no less
To reason's mandates; and the hopes divine
Of pure imagination;-above all,
To charity, and love, that have provided,
Within these precincts, a capacious bed
And receptacle, open to the good
And evil, to the just and the unjust;
In which they find an equal resting-place: 915
Even as the multitude of kindred brooks
And streams, whose murmur fills this hollow
vale,
Whether their course be turbulent or smooth,
Their waters clear or sullied, all are lost
Within the bosom of yon crystal Lake,
And end their journey in the same repose!
"And blest are they who sleep; and we that know,
While in a spot like this we breathe and walk,
That all beneath us by the wings are covered
Of motherly humanity, outspread
And gathering all within their tender shade,
Though loth and slow to come! A battle-field,
In stillness left when slaughter is no more,
With this compared, makes a strange spectacle!
A dismal prospect yields the wild shore strewn
With wrecks, and trod by feet of young and old
Wandering about in miserable search
Of friends or kindred, whom the angry sea
Restores not to their prayer! Ah! who would
think
932
934
That all the scattered subjects which compose Earth's melancholy vision through the space Of all her climes-these wretched, these de
praved,
945
To virtue lost, insensible of peace,
From the delights of charity cut off,
To pity dead, the oppressor and the opprest;
Tyrants who utter the destroying word,
And slaves who will consent to be destroyed-
Were of one species with the sheltered few,
Who, with a dutiful and tender hand,
Lodged, in a dear appropriated spot,
This file of infants; some that never breathed
The vital air; others, which, though allowed
That privilege, did yet expire too soon,
Or with too brief a warning, to admit
Administration of the holy rite
That lovingly consigns the babe to the arms
Of Jesus, and his everlasting care.
These that in trembling hope are laid apart;
And the besprinkled nursling, unrequired
Till he begins to smile upon the breast
That feeds him; and the tottering little-one
Taken from air and sunshine when the rose
Of infancy first blooms upon his cheek;
The thinking, thoughtless, school-boy; the bold
youth
950
960
Of soul impetuous, and the bashful maid
Smitten while all the promises of life.
Are opening round her; those of middle age,
Cast down while confident in strength they
stand,
Like pillars fixed more firmly, as might seem,
And more secure, by very weight of all 965
That, for support, rests on them; the decayed
And burthensome; and lastly, that poor few
Whose light of reason is with age extinct;
The hopeful and the hopeless, first and last,
The earliest summoned and the longest spared-
Are here deposited, with tribute paid
Various, but unto each some tribute paid;
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