I could not bear the joy which gave
Too just a response to mine own.

In vain. I dared not feign a groan ;
And in their artless looks I saw,

Between the mists of fear and awe,

That my own thought was theirs; and they
Expressed it not in words, but said,
Each in its heart, how every day

Will pass in happy work and play,
Now he is dead and gone away.

After the funeral all our kin

Assembled, and the will was read.

My friend, I tell thee, even the dead

Have strength, their putrid shrouds within, To blast and torture. Those who live

Still fear the living, but a corse

Is merciless, and power doth give

To such pale tyrants half the spoil
He rends from those who groan and toil,
Because they blush not with remorse

Among their crawling worms. Behold,

I have no child! my tale grows old
With grief, and staggers: let it reach
The limits of my feeble speech,

And languidly at length recline

On the brink of its own grave and mine.

Thou knowest what a thing is Poverty
Among the fallen on evil days :
'Tis Crime, and Fear, and Infamy,
And houseless Want in frozen ways
Wandering ungarmented, and Pain,
And, worse than all, that inward stain
Foul Self-contempt, which drowns in sneers
Youth's starlight smile, and makes its tears
First like hot gall, then dry for ever!

And well thou knowest a mother never

Could doom her children to this ill,

And well he knew the same. The will
Imported, that if e'er again

I sought my children to behold,

Or in my birth-place did remain

Beyond three days, whose hours were told,,

They should inherit nought: and he,
To whom next came their patrimony,
A sallow lawyer, cruel and cold,

Aye watched me, as the will was read,
With eyes askance, which sought to see
The secrets of my agony;

And with close lips and anxious brow

Stood canvassing still to and fro

The chance of my resolve, and all
The dead man's caution just did call

For in that killing lie 'twas said—

She is adulterous, and doth hold

In secret that the Christian creed

Is false, and therefore is much need
That I should have a care to save
My children from eternal fire.”
Friend, he was sheltered by the grave,

And therefore dared to be a liar!

In truth, the Indian on the pyre
Of her dead husband, half consumed,

As well might there be false, as I

To those abhorred embraces doomed,

Far worse than fire's brief agony.
As to the Christian creed, if true

Or false, I never questioned it:
I took it as the vulgar do:
Nor my vext soul had leisure yet
To doubt the things men say, or deem
That they are other than they seem.

All present who those crimes did hear,
In feigned or actual scorn and fear,
Men, women, children, slunk away,
Whispering with self-contented pride,
Which half suspects its own base lie.
I spoke to none, nor did abide,
But silently I went my way,
Nor noticed I where joyously

Sate my two younger babes at play,
In the court-yard through which I past;

But went with footsteps firm and fast
Till I came to the brink of the ocean green,

And there, a woman with grey hairs,

Who had my mother's servant been,

Kneeling, with many tears and prayers,
Made me accept a purse of gold,
Half of the earnings she had kept
To refuge her when weak and old.

With woe, which never sleeps or slept,
I wander now. 'Tis a vain thought—
But on yon alp, whose snowy head
'Mid the azure air is islanded,

(We see it o'er the flood of cloud,

Which sunrise from its eastern caves

Drives, wrinkling into golden waves,

Hung with its precipices proud,

From that grey stone where first we met)

There, now who knows the dead feel nought?

Should be my grave; for he who yet

Is my

soul's soul, once said: ""Twere sweet

'Mid stars and lightnings to abide,

And winds and lulling snows, that beat

With their soft flakes the mountain wide,
When weary meteor lamps repose,

And languid storms their pinions close :