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BRITISH RURAL COTTAGES IN 1842.
THE Scentless rose, train'd by the poor,
May sometimes grace the peasant's door;
But when will comfort enter there?
Beauty without, hides death within,
Like flowers upon the shroud of sin :
For ev'n the poor man's marriage-joys,
His wife, his sad-lipp'd girls and boys,
In mercy or in mockery given,

But brighten, with their "hour of heav'n,"
A life of ghastly toil and care:
His pay is pain, his hope despair,
Although the cottage-rose is fair!
Out of his weekly pittance small,

Three crowns, for children, wife, and all,
Poor British Slave! how can he save
A pittance for his evening's close?
No roses deck the workhouse-grave!
Where is the aged pauper's rose !

EPIGRAM.

I KNOW, thy vileness is thy might,

And that thou 'rt in thy weakness strong;
I do not ask thee to do right;

But, paltry creature, do no wrong.

VOL. II.

N

YOUNG ENGLAND.

I MET a sage who had been dead
A hundred years and more;
And still he said what he had said
A hundred years before:

Then, met I one (a rogue's sly son,)
Who printed what the other said,

And praised it, ev'n with tears:

Alas! he also had been dead
A hundred years.

EPIGRAM.

IN speech and print, in prose and song, Still aiding Starveall's right to wrong, How oft the people's knaves have shown, "That mine is his, and his his own!" *

* See lines by C. R. Pemberton. Poor Charles !

POOR CHARLES.

SHUNN'D by the rich, the vain, the dull,
Truth's all-forgiving son,
The gentlest of the beautiful,
His painful course hath run;
Content to live, to die resign'd,
In meekness proud of wishes kind,
And duties nobly done.

A godlike child hath left the earth;

In heav'n a child is born:

Cold World! thou could'st not know his worth, And well he earn'd thy scorn;

For he believed that all may be

What martyrs are, in spite of thee,

Nor wear thy crown of thorn.

Smiling, he bound it round his brain,
And dared what martyrs dare;
For God, who wastes nor joy nor pain,
Had arm'd his soul to bear;

But vain his hope to find below

That peace which heav'n alone can know ;

He died-to seek it there.

ON A ROSE IN DECEMBER.

STAY yet, pale flower, though coming storms will tear

thee,

My soul grows darker, and I cannot spare thee.

WAR.

THE Victories of mind,
Are won for all mankind;
But war wastes what it wins,
Ends worse than it begins,
And is a game of woes,
Which nations always lose :

Though tyrant tyrant kill,
The slayer liveth still.

SONNET ON A PAIR OF SPECTACLES.

How many men, who liv'd to bless mankind,
Have died unthank'd! Far-teaching and self-taught,
They did what learning scorns to learn or teach;
Their deeds are portion of the general thought;
Their thoughts have pass'd into the common speech,
And labour's wages; yet they left behind

SONNET ON A PAIR OF SPECTACLES.

Nor name, nor record! save the good which grew
Out of the sacrifice that gives and saves.

Lo, what a tree is rising from their graves,

To shelter, ev'n on earth, the wise and true!

181

Then, worship not famed words, which, like the winds,
Or Homer's song, seem things that cannot die,
And ever lived: they are but names of minds
Whose good or evil speaks immortally.

TO FANNY ANN.

As the flower bloweth,
As the stream floweth,
Daughter of beauty,
Do thou thy duty.
What, though the morrow
May dawn in sorrow?

Ev'n as light hasteth,

Darkness, too, wasteth :
Morn then discloses,

Raindrops on roses!

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