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William Wordsworth - The Old Cumberland Beggar
Work rating: Medium

. I saw an aged Beggar in my walk;
   And he was seated, by the highway side,
   On a low structure of rude masonry
   Built at the foot of a huge hill, that they
   Who lead their horses down the steep rough road
   May thence remount at ease. The aged Man
   Had placed his staff across the broad smooth stone
   That overlays the pile; and, from a bag
   All white with flour, the dole of village dames,
  He drew his scraps and fragments, one by one;
  And scanned them with a fixed and serious look
  Of idle computation. In the sun,
  Upon the second step of that small pile,
  Surrounded by those wild, unpeopled hills,
  He sat, and ate his food in solitude:
  And ever, scattered from his palsied hand,
  That, still attempting to prevent the waste,
  Was baffled still, the crumbs in little showers
  Fell on the ground; and the small mountain birds
  Not venturing yet to peck their destined meal,
 Approached within the length of half his staff.
  Him from my childhood have I known; and then
  He was so old, he seems not older now;
  He travels on, a solitary Man,
  So helpless in appearance, that from him
  The sauntering Horseman throws not with a slack
  And careless hand his alms upon the ground,
  But stops,—that he may safely lodge the coin
  Within the old Man`s hat; nor quits him so,
  But still, when he has given his horse the rein,
  Watches the aged Beggar with a look
  Sidelong, and half-reverted. She who tends
  The toll-gate, when in summer at her door
  She turns her wheel, if on the road she sees
  The aged Beggar coming, quits her work,
  And lifts the latch for him that he may pass.
  The post-boy, when his rattling wheels o`ertake
  The aged Beggar in the woody lane,
  Shouts to him from behind; and if, thus warned,
  The old Man does not change his course, the boy
  Turns with less noisy wheels to the roadside,
  And passes gently by, without a curse
  Upon his lips, or anger at his heart.
  He travels on, a solitary Man; 
  His age has no companion. On the ground 
  His eyes are turned, and, as he moves along, 
  They move along the ground; and, evermore, 
  Instead of common and habitual sight 
  Of fields, with rural works, of hill and dale, 
  And the blue sky, one little span of earth 
  Is all his prospect. Thus, from day to day, 
  Bow-bent, his eyes forever on the ground, 
  He plies his weary journey; seeing still, 
  And seldom knowing that he sees, some straw, 
  Some scattered leaf, or marks which, in one track, 
  The nails of cart or chariot-wheel have left 
  Impressed on the white road,—in the same line, 
  At distance still the same. Poor Traveller! 
  His staff trails with him; scarcely do his feet 
  Disturb the summer dust; he is so still 
  In look and motion, that the cottage curs, 
  Ere he has passed the door, will turn away, 
  Weary of barking at him. Boys and girls, 
  The vacant and the busy, maids and youths, 
  And urchins newly breeched—all pass him by: 
  Him even the slow-paced waggon leaves behind.
  But deem not this Man useless.—Statesmen! ye
  Who are so restless in your wisdom, ye
  Who have a broom still ready in your hands
  To rid the world of nuisances; ye proud,
  Heart-swoln, while in your pride ye contemplate
  Your talents, power, or wisdom, deem him not
  A burden of the earth! `Tis Nature`s law
  That none, the meanest of created things,
  Of forms created the most vile and brute,
  The dullest or most noxious, should exist
  Divorced from good—a spirit and pulse of good,
  A life and soul, to every mode of being
  Inseparably linked. Then be assured
  That least of all can aught—that ever owned
  The heaven-regarding eye and front sublime
  Which man is born to—sink, howe`er depressed,
  So low as to be scorned without a sin;
  Without offence to God cast out of view;
  Like the dry remnant of a garden-flower
  Whose seeds are shed, or as an implement
  Worn out and worthless. While from door to door,
  This old Man creeps, the villagers in him
  Behold a record which together binds
  Past deeds and offices of charity,
  Else unremembered, and so keeps alive
  The kindly mood in hearts which lapse of years,
  And that half-wisdom half-experience gives,
  Make slow to feel, and by sure steps resign
  To selfishness and cold oblivious cares,
  Among the farms and solitary huts,
  Hamlets and thinly-scattered villages,
  Where`er the aged Beggar takes his rounds,
  The mild necessity of use compels
 The acts of love; and habit does the work
 Of reason; yet prepares that after-joy
 Which reason cherishes. And thus the soul,
 By that sweet taste of pleasure unpursued,
 Doth find herself insensibly disposed
 To virtue and true goodness.
                   Some there are 
 


 By their good works exalted, lofty minds 
 And meditative, authors of delight 
 And happiness, which to the end of time 
 Will live, and spread, and kindle: even such minds 
 In childhood, from this solitary Being, 
 Or from like wanderer, haply have received 
 (A thing more precious far than all that books 
 Or the solicitudes of love can do!)
 That first mild touch of sympathy and thought,
 In which they found their kindred with a world
 Where want and sorrow were. The easy man
 Who sits at his own door,—and, like the pear
 That overhangs his head from the green wall,
 Feeds in the sunshine; the robust and young,
 The prosperous and unthinking, they who live
 Sheltered, and flourish in a little grove
 Of their own kindred;—all behold in him
 A silent monitor, which on their minds
 Must needs impress a transitory thought
 Of self-congratulation, to the heart
 Of each recalling his peculiar boons,
 His charters and exemptions; and, perchance,
 Though he to no one give the fortitude
 And circumspection needful to preserve
 His present blessings, and to husband up
 The respite of the season, he, at least,
 And `t is no vulgar service, makes them felt.
 


 Yet further.—Many, I believe, there are
 Who live a life of virtuous decency,
 Men who can hear the Decalogue and feel
 No self-reproach; who of the moral law
 Established in the land where they abide
  Are strict observers; and not negligent
 In acts of love to those with whom they dwell,
 Their kindred, and the children of their blood.
 


 Praise be to such, and to their slumbers peace!
 But of the poor man ask, the abject poor;
 Go, and demand of him, if there be here
 In this cold abstinence from evil deeds,
 And these inevitable charities,
 Wherewith to satisfy the human soul?
 No—man is dear to man; the poorest poor
 Long for some moments in a weary life
 When they can know and feel that they have been,
 Themselves, the fathers and the dealers-out
 Of some small blessings; have been kind to such
 As needed kindness, for this single cause,
 That we have all of us one human heart.
 —Such pleasure is to one kind Being known,
 My neighbour, when with punctual care, each week
 Duly as Friday comes, though pressed herself
 By her own wants, she from her store of meal
 Takes one unsparing handful for the scrip
 Of this old Mendicant, and, from her door
 Returning with exhilarated heart,
 Sits by her fire, and builds her hope in heaven.
 


 Then let him pass, a blessing on his head!
 And while in that vast solitude to which
 The tide of things has borne him, he appears
 To breathe and live but for himself alone,
 Unblamed, uninjured, let him bear about
 The good which the benignant law of Heaven
 Has hung around him: and, while life is his,
 Still let him prompt the unlettered villagers
 To tender offices and pensive thoughts.
 —Then let him pass, a blessing on his head!
 And, long as he can wander, let him breathe
 The freshness of the valleys; let his blood
 Struggle with frosty air and winter snows;
 And let the chartered wind that sweeps the heath
 Beat his grey locks against his withered face.
 Reverence the hope whose vital anxiousness
 Gives the last human interest to his heart.
 May never HOUSE, misnamed of INDUSTRY,
 Make him a captive!—for that pent-up din,
 Those life-consuming sounds that clog the air,
 Be his the natural silence of old age!
 Let him be free of mountain solitudes;
 And have around him, whether heard or not,
 The pleasant melody of woodland birds.
 Few are his pleasures: if his eyes have now
 Been doomed so long to settle upon earth
 That not without some effort they behold
 The countenance of the horizontal sun,
 Rising or setting, let the light at least
 Find a free entrance to their languid orbs.
 And let him, where and when he will, sit down
 Beneath the trees, or on a grassy bank
 Of highway side, and with the little birds
 Share his chance-gathered meal; and, finally,
 As in the eye of Nature he has lived,
 So in the eye of Nature let him die!
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