The Poetical Works of John Critchley Prince Edited by R. A. Douglas Lithgow |
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THE PAUPER'S GRAVE. |
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 | The Poetical Works of John Critchley Prince |  |
328
THE PAUPER'S GRAVE.
Behold ye how calmly he sinks to death!
His last pulse flutters, his eyes grow dim;
But those who await his parting breath
Can cherish no feeling of grief for him;
Unmoved as his prison walls they stand,
Till the tide of existence has ebbed away,
Prepared with a rude and remorseless hand
To render to earth the insulted clay.
He dies,—and already some hungry slave
Is breaking the sod for the Pauper's grave.
His last pulse flutters, his eyes grow dim;
But those who await his parting breath
Can cherish no feeling of grief for him;
Unmoved as his prison walls they stand,
Till the tide of existence has ebbed away,
Prepared with a rude and remorseless hand
To render to earth the insulted clay.
He dies,—and already some hungry slave
Is breaking the sod for the Pauper's grave.
With many a jest on his woes untold,
They lift from its pallet the lifeless load;
Ere the stirless streams of his veins are cold,
They hurry him forth to his last abode;
Nor friendship nor love attends him there,
Not a knell is rung, not a tear is shed;
But hurried and brief is the burial prayer,
By a worldly priest o'er the sacred dead:
But the minion of power, and unfeeling knave,
Deign not to look on the Pauper's grave.
They lift from its pallet the lifeless load;
Ere the stirless streams of his veins are cold,
They hurry him forth to his last abode;
Nor friendship nor love attends him there,
Not a knell is rung, not a tear is shed;
But hurried and brief is the burial prayer,
By a worldly priest o'er the sacred dead:
But the minion of power, and unfeeling knave,
Deign not to look on the Pauper's grave.
But where can the wife of his bosom be?—
With a broken heart she has gone before;
And the son whom he taught to be just and free?—
He selleth his blood on a foreign shore.
But the dove of his household, has she, too, flown?—
Alas! there is woe in the lost one's name,
For a pitiless destiny brought her down
To the harlot's ruin, remorse, and shame:
And he, the fond father, who yearned to save,
Forgets his despair in a Pauper's grave.
With a broken heart she has gone before;
And the son whom he taught to be just and free?—
He selleth his blood on a foreign shore.
329
Alas! there is woe in the lost one's name,
For a pitiless destiny brought her down
To the harlot's ruin, remorse, and shame:
And he, the fond father, who yearned to save,
Forgets his despair in a Pauper's grave.
Born on our own unconquered soil,
His life was pure, though his lot was hard;
His days were devoted to painful toil,
And precarious bread was his best reward;
But his arm waxed faint, and his Workhouse doom
Was darker far than the lot he bore;
For, shut from the world in a living tomb,
Nor mother nor offspring beheld him more.
Arise and avenge him, ye good and brave,
For blood cries out from the Pauper's grave!
His life was pure, though his lot was hard;
His days were devoted to painful toil,
And precarious bread was his best reward;
But his arm waxed faint, and his Workhouse doom
Was darker far than the lot he bore;
For, shut from the world in a living tomb,
Nor mother nor offspring beheld him more.
Arise and avenge him, ye good and brave,
For blood cries out from the Pauper's grave!
| The Poetical Works of John Critchley Prince | |