And pouring forth the earliest,
First prayer, with which I learn'd to bow,
Have felt my mother's spirit rush
Upon me as in by-past years,
And, yielding to the blessed gush
Of my ungovernable tears,
Have risen up-the gay, the wild-
Subdued and humble as a child.
MARY, since first I knew thee, to this hour,
My love hath deepen'd, with my wiser sense
Of what in woman is to reverence:
Thy clear heart, fresh as e'er was forest flower,
Still opens more to me its beauteous dower :-
But let praise hush-Love asks no evidence
To prove itself well-placed: we know not whence
It gleans the straws that thatch its humble bower:
We can but say we found it in the heart,
Spring of all sweetest thoughts, arch foe of blame,
Sower of flowers in the dusty mart,
Pure vestal of the poet's holy flame,—
This is enough, and we have done our part
If we but keep it spotless as it came.
JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL, 1819
OH for a lodge in some vast wilderness,
Some boundless contiguity of shade,
Where rumour of oppression and deceit,
Of unsuccessful or successful war,
Might never reach me more! My ear is pain'd,
My soul is sick with every day's report
Of wrong and outrage with which earth is fill'd.
There is no flesh in man's obdurate heart—
It does not feel for man. That natural bond
Of brotherhood is sever'd as the flax
That falls asunder at the touch of fire.
He finds his fellow guilty of a skin
Not colour'd like his own, and, having power
To enforce the wrong, for such a worthy cause,
Dooms and devotes him as his lawful prey!
Lands intersected by a narrow firth
Abhor each other. Mountains interposed
Make enemies of nations, who had else
Like kindred drops been mingled into one.
Thus man devotes his brother, and destroys;
And worse than all, and most to be deplored,
As human nature's broadest, foulest blot,
Chains him, and tasks him, and exacts his sweat
With stripes that Mercy with a bleeding heart
Weeps when she sees inflicted on a beast!
Then what is man? And what man seeing this,
And having human feelings, does not blush
And hang his head, to think himself a man?
I would not have a slave to till my ground,
To carry me, to fan me while I sleep,
And tremble when I wake, for all the wealth
That sinews bought and sold have ever earn'd.
No: dear as freedom is, and in my heart's
Just estimation prized above all price,
I had much rather be myself the slave,
And wear the bonds, than fasten them on him.
We have no slaves at home-then why abroad?
And they themselves, once ferried o'er the wave
That parts us, are emancipate and loosed.
Slaves cannot breathe in England; if their lungs
Receive our air, that moment they are free;
They touch our country, and their shackles fall.
That's noble, and bespeaks a nation proud
And jealous of the blessing. Spread it then,
And let it circulate through every vein
Of all your empire, that where Britain's power
Is felt, mankind may feel her mercy too.
W. COWPER, 1731-1800.
PITY the sorrows of a poor old man!
Whose trembling limbs have borne him to your door, Whose days are dwindled to the shortest span,
Oh! give relief, and Heaven will bless your store.
These tatter'd clothes my poverty bespeak,
These hoary locks proclaim my lengthen'd years; And many a furrow in my grief-worn cheek, Has been the channel to a stream of tears.
Yon house, erected on the rising ground,
With tempting aspect drew me from my road,
For plenty there a residence has found,
And grandeur a magnificent abode.
(Hard is the fate of the infirm and poor!)
Here craving for a morsel of their bread,
A pamper'd menial forced me from the door,
To seek a shelter in a humbler shed.
Oh! take me to your hospitable dome,
Keen blows the wind, and piercing is the cold!
Short is my passage to the friendly tomb,
For I am poor, and miserably old.
Should I reveal the source of every grief,
If soft humanity e'er touch'd your breast, Your hands would not withhold the kind relief, And tears of pity could not be repress'd.
Heaven sends misfortunes-why should we repine?
'Tis Heaven has brought me to the state you see :
And your condition may be soon like mine,
The child of sorrow, and of misery.
A little farm was my paternal lot,
Then, like the lark, I sprightly hail'd the morn;
But ah! oppression forced me from my cot;
My cattle died, and blighted was my corn.
My daughter-once the comfort of my age!
Lured by a villain from her native home,
Is cast, abandon'd, on the world's wide stage,
And doom'd in scanty poverty to roam.
My tender wife-sweet soother of my care!
Struck with sad anguish at the stern decree,
Fell-lingering fell, a victim to despair,
And left the world to wretchedness and me.
Pity the sorrows of a poor old man!
Whose trembling limbs have borne him to your door, Whose days are dwindled to the shortest span, Oh! give relief, and Heaven will bless your store. REV. THOMAS MOSS, 1769.
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