Just serves to keep life in. A blessed prospect, To slave while there is strength, in age the workhouse, A parish shell at last, and the little bell
Tolled hastily for a pauper's funeral!
Aye, Sir; and were he drest
And cleaned, he'd be as fine a boy to look on
As the Squire's young master.
Let comfortably in the summer wind;
But when the winter comes, it pinches me To see the little wretch! I've three besides ; And, God forgive me! but I often wish To see them in their coffius.
"Tis night; the mercenary tyrants sleep As undisturbed as Justice! but no more The wretched slave, as on his native shore, Rests on his reedy couch: he wakes to weep! Though through the toil and anguish of the day No tear escaped him, not one suffering groan Beneath the twisted thong, he weeps alone In bitterness; thinking that far away Though the gay Negroes join the midnight song, Though merriment resounds on Niger's shore, She whom he loves, far from the cheerful throng Stands sad, and gazes from her lowly door With dim-grown eye, silent and wo-begone, And weeps for him who will return no more.
Pizarro here was born; a greater name The list of glory boasts not. Toil and pain, Famine, and hostile elements, and hosts Embattled, failed to check him in his course; Not to be wearied, not to be deterred, Not to be overcome. A mighty realm He overran, and with relentless arms Slew or enslaved its unoffending sons,
And wealth, and power, and fame, were his rewards. There is another world, beyond the grave, According to their deeds where men are judged, O Reader! if thy daily bread be earned By daily labour,-yea, however low, However wretched be thy lot assigned, Thank thou, with deepest gratitude, the God Who made thee, that thou art not such as he
No cloud, no relique of the sunken day Distinguishes the West, no long thin slip Of sullen light, no obscure trembling hues. Come, we will rest on this old, mossy bridge! You see the glimmer of the stream beneath, But hear no murmuring: it flows silently O'er its soft bed of verdure. All is still, A balmy night! and tho' the stars be dim, Yet let us think upon the vernal showers That gladden the green earth, and we shall find A pleasure in the dimness of the stars. And hark! the Nightingale begins its song, "Most musical, most melancholy" Bird! A melancholy Bird? Oh! idle thought!
In nature there is nothing melancholy.
But some night-wandering man, whose heart was pie. ced With the resemblance of a grievous wrong,
Or slow distemper, or neglected love,
so, poor wretch! filled all things with himself
And made all gentle sounds tell back the tale Of his own sorrow) he, and such as he, First named these notes a melancholy strain: And many a poet echoes the conceit; Poet who hath been building up the rhyme
When he had better far have stretched his limbs Beside a brook in mossy forest-dell,
By sun or moon-light, to the influxes
Of shapes, and sounds, and shifting elements Surrendering his whole spirit, of his song And of his fame forgetful!
Should share in Nature's immortality, A venerable thing! and so his song Should make all Nature lovelier, and itself Be loved like Nature! But 'twill not be so; And youths and maidens most poetical, Who lose the deepening twilights of the spring In ball-rooms and hot theatres, they still Full of meek sympathy must heave their sighs O'er Philomela's pity-pleading strains.
My Friend, and thou, our Sister! we have learnt A different lore: we may not thus profane Nature's sweet voices, always full of love And joyance! "Tis the merry Nightingale That crowds, and hurries, and precipitates With fast thick warble his delicious notes, As he were fearful that an April night Would be too short for him to utter forth His love-chaunt, and disburden his full soul Of all its music!
And I know a grove Of large extent, hard by a castle huge,
Which the great lord inhabits not; and so This grove is wild with tangling underwood, And the trim walks are broken up, and grass, Thin grass and king-cups grow within the paths. But never elsewhere in one place I knew So many Nightingales; and far and near, In wood and thicket, over the wide grove, They answer and provoke each other's songs, With skirmish and capricious passagings, And murmurs musical and swift jug jug, And one, low piping, sounds more sweet than all, Stirring the air with such an harmony,
That should you close your eyes, you might almost Forget it was not day! On moonlight bushes, Whose dewy leafits are but half disclosed, You may perchance behold them on the twigs, Their bright, bright eyes, their eyes both bright and full Glistening, while many a glow-worm in the shade Lights up her love-torch.
Who dwelleth in her hospitable home Hard by the castle, and at latest eve (Even like a lady vowed and dedicate
To something more than Nature in the grove) Glides thro' the pathways; she knows all their notes. That gentle Maid! and oft a moment's space, What time the Moon was lost behind a cloud, Hath heard a pause of silence; till the Moon Emerging, hath awakened earth and sky With one sensation, and these wakeful Birds Have all burst forth in choral minstrelsy, As if one quick and sudden gale had swept
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