University of Virginia Library

These stanzas were occasioned by reading the following paragraph in an old magazine. “There now resides in Cawsand a man who has not slept in a bed for thirty years. He was a sailor in his youth and unfortunate. He always refused an asylum in the workhouse, subsisting on the miserable pittance of two-pence or three-pence a day, earned by carrying pitchers of water, and indignantly preferring this to living by the bounty of others. In the coldest night of winter he would sleep under a boat on the beach of Cawsand; at other times he took refuge in the cliffs of the rocks, and couched himself with the raven and the otter.” I have endeavoured to give more animation to this little poem, by putting the sentiments into the mouth of the hero of the tale; the anecdote itself seems to me a fine instance of English spirit.