---

Robert Southey - The Pauper`s Funeral
Work rating: Low

What! and not one to heave the pious sigh!
Not one whose sorrow-swoln and aching eye
For social scenes, for life`s endearments fled,
Shall drop a tear and dwell upon the dead!
Poor wretched Outcast! I will weep for thee,
And sorrow for forlorn humanity.
Yes I will weep, but not that thou art come
To the stern Sabbath of the silent tomb:
For squalid Want, and the black scorpion Care,
Heart-withering fiends! shall never enter there.
I sorrow for the ills thy life has known
As thro` the world`s long pilgrimage, alone,
Haunted by Poverty and woe-begone,
Unloved, unfriended, thou didst journey on:
Thy youth in ignorance and labour past,
And thine old age all barrenness and blast!
Hard was thy Fate, which, while it doom`d to woe,
Denied thee wisdom to support the blow;
And robb`d of all its energy thy mind,
Ere yet it cast thee on thy fellow-kind,
Abject of thought, the victim of distress,
To wander in the world`s wide wilderness.

Poor Outcast sleep in peace! the wintry storm
Blows bleak no more on thine unshelter`d form;
Thy woes are past; thou restest in the tomb;—
I pause—and ponder on the days to come.
Source
The script ran 0.001 seconds.