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Robert Southey - English Eclogues III - The FuneralRobert Southey - English Eclogues III - The Funeral
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The coffin as I past across the lane   Came sudden on my view. It was not here,   A sight of every day, as in the streets   Of the great city, and we paus`d and ask`d   Who to the grave was going. It was one,   A village girl, they told us, who had borne   An eighteen months strange illness, and had pined   With such slow wasting that the hour of death   Came welcome to her. We pursued our way   To the house of mirth, and with that idle talk   That passes o`er the mind and is forgot,   We wore away the time. But it was eve   When homewardly I went, and in the air   Was that cool freshness, that discolouring shade   That makes the eye turn inward. Then I heard   Over the vale the heavy toll of death   Sound slow; it made me think upon the dead,   I questioned more and learnt her sorrowful tale.   She bore unhusbanded a mother`s name,   And he who should have cherished her, far off   Sail`d on the seas, self-exil`d from his home,   For he was poor. Left thus, a wretched one,   Scorn made a mock of her, and evil tongues   Were busy with her name. She had one ill   Heavier, neglect, forgetfulness from him   Whom she had loved so dearly. Once he wrote,   But only once that drop of comfort came   To mingle with her cup of wretchedness;   And when his parents had some tidings from him,   There was no mention of poor Hannah there,   Or `twas the cold enquiry, bitterer   Than silence. So she pined and pined away   And for herself and baby toil`d and toil`d,   Nor did she, even on her death bed, rest   From labour, knitting with her outstretch`d arms   Till she sunk with very weakness. Her old mother   Omitted no kind office, and she work`d   Hard, and with hardest working barely earn`d   Enough to make life struggle and prolong   The pains of grief and sickness. Thus she lay   On the sick bed of poverty, so worn   With her long suffering and that painful thought   That at her heart lay rankling, and so weak,   That she could make no effort to express   Affection for her infant; and the child,   Whose lisping love perhaps had solaced her   With a strange infantine ingratitude   Shunn`d her as one indifferent. She was past   That anguish, for she felt her hour draw on,   And `twas her only comfoft now to think   Upon the grave. "Poor girl!" her mother said,   "Thou hast suffered much!" "aye mother! there is none   "Can tell what I have suffered!" she replied,   "But I shall soon be where the weary rest."   And she did rest her soon, for it pleased God   To take her to his mercy.
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