When the weather is warm and bright!— Shall bear hope's tender blossoms While underneath the eaves The brooding swallows cling, As if to show me their sunny backs, And twit me with the Spring. "Oh! but to breathe the breath Of the cowslip and primrose sweetWith 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 And the walk that costs a meal! "Oh! but for one short hour- But only time for grief! A little weeping would ease my heart; But in their briny bed My tears must stop, for every drop Hinders needle and thread!" With fingers weary and worn, With eyelids heavy and red, A woman sat, in unwomanly rags, In poverty, hunger, and dirt; And still, with a voice of dolorous pitchWould that its tone could reach the rich!She sang this "Song of the Shirt!" THOMAS HOOD. Into the silent land! O land! O land! For all the broken-hearted The mildest herald by our fate allotted Beckons, and with inverted torch doth stand To lead us with a gentle hand Into the land of the great departed Into the silent land! JOHANN GAUDENZ VON SALIS. (German.) Translation of H. W. Longfellow. THE PAUPER'S DEATHBED. TREAD Softly! bow the head In reverent silence bow! Stranger, however great, With lowly reverence bow! There's one in that poor shedOne by that paltry bedGreater than thou. Beneath that beggar's roof, Lo! Death doth keep his state! Enter!-no crowds attend Enter!-no guards defend Now all his labor's done! Take the soul home! CAROLINE BOWLES SOUTHEY. THE PAUPER'S DRIVE. THERE's a grim one-horse hearse in a jolly round trot To the church-yard a pauper is going, I wot; The road it is rough, and the hearse has no springs; He's taking a drive in his carriage at last; But it will not be long, if he goes on so fast Rattle his bones over the stones! He's only a pauper, whom nobody owns! You bumpkins! who stare at your brother conveyed Behold what respect to a cloddy is paid! And be joyful to think, when by death you 're laid low, You've a chance to the grave like a gemman to go! Rattle his bones over the stones! He's only a pauper, whom nobody owns! But a truce to this strain; for my soul it is sad, To think that a heart in humanity clad And hark to the dirge which the mad driver Should make, like the brutes, such a desolate sings: Rattle his bones over the stones! He's only a pauper, whom nobody owns! Oh, where are the mourners? Alas! there are none He has left not a gap in the world, now he's gone Not a tear in the eye of child, woman, or man; To the grave with his carcass as fast as you can: Rattle his bones over the stones! He's only a pauper, whom nobody owns! What a jolting, and creaking, and splashing, and din! The whip how it cracks! and the wheels, how they spin! How the dirt, right and left, o'er the hedges is hurled! The pauper at length makes a noise in the world! Rattle his bones over the stones! He's only a pauper, whom nobody owns! Poor pauper defunct! he has made some approach To gentility, now that he's stretched in a coach! end, And depart from the light without leaving a friend! Bear soft his bones over the stones! Though a pauper, he's one whom his Maker yet owns! THOMAS NOBL THE DEATH-BED. WE watched her breathing thro' the night, As in her breast the wave of life So silently we seemed to speak, So slowly moved about, As we had lent her half our powers To eke her living out. Our very hopes belied our fears, Our fears our hopes belied— We thought her dying when she slept, And sleeping when she died. For when the morn came, dim and sad, THOMAS Hoon LYCIDAS. YET once more, O ye laurels, and once more Ye myrtles brown, with ivy never sere, I come to pluck your berries harsh and crude, And with forced fingers rude With wild thyme and the gadding vine o'ergrown, And all their echoes, mourn; The willows, and the hazel copses green, Fanning their joyous leaves to thy soft lays. Shatter your leaves before the mellowing Or taint-worm to the weanling herds that year. Bitter constraint, and sad occasion dear, Compels me to disturb your season due; For Lycidas is dead, dead ere his prime, Young Lycidas, and hath not left his peer. Who would not sing for Lycidas? he knew Himself to sing, and build the lofty rhyme. He must not float upon his watery bier Unwept, and welter to the parching wind, Without the meed of some melodious tear. Begin then, sisters of the sacred well, That from beneath the seat of Jove doth spring, Begin, and somewhat loudly sweep the string. With lucky words favor my destined urn, And bid fair peace be to my sable shroud; rill. Together both, ere the high lawns appeared Under the opening eyelids of the morn, Oft till the star that rose at evening bright Toward heaven's descent had sloped his westering wheel. Meanwhile the rural ditties were not mute, Tempered to the oaten flute; graze, Or frost to flowers, that their gay wardrobe wear, When first the white-thorn blows; Where were ye, nymphs, when the re morseless deep Closed o'er the head of your loved Lycidas?For neither were ye playing on the steep, Where your old bards, the famous druids. lie, Nor on the shaggy top of Mona high, Nor yet where Deva spreads her wizard stream Ay me! I fondly dream, Had ye been there; for what could that have done? What could the muse herself that Orpheus bore, The muse herself for her enchanting son, roar, His gory visage down the stream was sent, Down the swift Hebrus to the Lesbian shore? Alas! what boots it with incessant care To tend the homely, slighted shepherd's trade, And strictly meditate the thankless muse? Were it not better done, as others use, To sport with Amaryllis in the shade, Or with the tangles of Newra's hair? Fame is the spur that the clear spirit doth raise (That last infirmity of noble minds) Rough satyrs danced, and fauns with cloven To scorn delights, and live laborious days; |