 | Miscellanies (1785) |  |
Ask the pale mother why 'tis joy to weep
When o'er her stricken babe faint slumbers creep?
Ask why the child at midnight's thickest gloom
Still fondly lingers at a parent's tomb?
Or why the wife, in times of raging death,
Yet leans to catch her lord's polluted breath?
Go, warn them straight of pestilential air,
Point to the weakness here, the danger there,
Let mirth and music all their powers employ,
To spread for every sense its favourite joy,
Then, arm'd with all the world's seductions try
To wean the mourners from so dark a sky,
Oh! they will spurn the offer'd gales of health,
The lures of pleasure and the snares of wealth,
Prefer the dark recesses of disease,
The sickly pillow and the tainted breeze,
And call it conscience, nature, bliss, to know
The last extremities of social woe.
When o'er her stricken babe faint slumbers creep?
Ask why the child at midnight's thickest gloom
Still fondly lingers at a parent's tomb?
Or why the wife, in times of raging death,
Yet leans to catch her lord's polluted breath?
Go, warn them straight of pestilential air,
Point to the weakness here, the danger there,
Let mirth and music all their powers employ,
To spread for every sense its favourite joy,
Then, arm'd with all the world's seductions try
To wean the mourners from so dark a sky,
Oh! they will spurn the offer'd gales of health,
The lures of pleasure and the snares of wealth,
Prefer the dark recesses of disease,
The sickly pillow and the tainted breeze,
47
The last extremities of social woe.
| Miscellanies (1785) | |