When the weather is warm and bright While underneath the eaves The brooding swallows cling, As if to show me their sunny backs, "O! but to breathe the breath Of the cowslip and primrose sweet With the sky above my head, And the grass beneath my feet, For only one short hour To feel as I used to feel, Before I knew the woes of want, "O! but for one short hour! No blessed leisure for love or hope, A little weeping would ease my heart, My tears must stop, for every drop With fingers weary and worn, And still with a voice of dolorous pitch, Would that its tone could reach the rich! She sang this "Song of the Shirt!” THE LADY'S DREAM. THE lady lay in her bed, Her couch so warm and soft, But her sleep was restless and broken still; From side to side, she muttered and moaned, At last she startled up, And gazed on the vacant air, With a look of awe, as if she saw Some dreadful phantom there And then in the pillow she buried her face The very curtain shook, Her terror was so extreme; And the light that fell on the broidered quilt Kept a tremulous gleam; And her voice was hollow, and shook as she cried: "O, me! that awful dream! "That weary, weary walk, In the church-yard's dismal ground! That came and flitted round, Death, death, and nothing but death, “And, O! those maidens young, Who wrought in that dreary room, With figures drooping and spectres thin, And cheeks without a bloom; And the voice that cried, For the pomp of pride, We haste to an early tomb! "For the pomp and pleasure of pride, We toil like Afric slaves, And only to earn a home at last, Where yonder cypress waves ; "And still the coffins came, With their sorrowful trains and slow; Coffin after coffin still, A sad and sickening show; From grief exempt, I never had dreamt "Of the hearts that daily break, Disease, and Hunger, and Pain, and Want, "For the blind and the cripple were there, The naked, alas! that I might have clad, "The sorrow I might have soothed, And the unregarded tears; For many a thronging shape was there, From long-forgotten years, Ay, even the poor rejected Moor, "Each pleading look, that long ago Woe, woe for me if the past should be "No need of sulphureous lake, No need of fiery coal, But only that crowd of human kind Who wanted pity and dole In everlasting retrospect Will wring my sinful soul! "Alas! I have walked through life Too heedless where I trod; Nay, helping to trample my fellow-worm, Forgetting that even the sparrow falls “I drank the richest draughts ; But I never remembered the wretched ones That starve for want of food "I dressed as the noble dress, In cloth of silver and gold, With silk, and satin, and costly furs, But I never remembered the naked limbs "The wounds I might have healed! But evil is wrought by want of thought, She clasped her fervent hands, And yet, O, yet, that many a dame THE WORKHOUSE CLOCK. AN ALLEGORY. THERE'S a murmur in the air, A noise in every street The murmur of many tongues, The noise of numerous feet While round the workhouse door The laboring classes flock, For why? the overseer of the poor Is setting the workhouse clock. |