Poems, Dialogues in Verse and Epigrams :: :: University of Virginia Library

Preacher of discontent! Then large indeed
Would be my audience, copious my display
Of common-places. Better curb and quell
Not by the bridle but the provender.

Sportsmen! manorial lords! of you am I.
Let us, since game grows scarcer every day,
Watch our preserves near home: we need but beat
About the cottage-garden and slim croft
For plenteous sport. Catch up the ragged child,
Kiss it, however frighten'd: take the hand
Of the young girl from out the artizan's
Who leads her to the factory, soon to wear
The tissue she has woven dyed in shame:
Help the halt eld to rule the swerving ass,
And upright set his crutch outside the porch,

260

To reach, nor stoop to reach, at his return.
'Tis somewhat to hear blessings, to confer
Is somewhat more. Wealth is content to shine
By his own light, nor asks he Virtue's aid;
But Virtue comes sometimes, and comes unaskt,
Nay, comes the first to conference.

There is one,
One man there is, high in nobility
Of birth and fortune, who erects his house
Among the heathen, where dun smoke ascends
All day around, and drearier fire all night.
Far from that house are heard the church's bells,
And thro' deep cinders lies the road, yet there
Walks the rich man, walks in humility,
Because the poor he walks with, and with God.
No mitred purple-buskin'd baron he,
Self-privileged to strip the calendar
Of Sabbath days, to rob the cattle's rest,
And mount, mid prance and neighing, his proud throne.

Of what is thinking now thy studious head,
O artist! in the glorious dome of Art,
That thou shouldst turn thine eyes from Titian's ray,
Or Raffael's halo round the Virgin's head
And Child's, foreshowing Paradise regain'd?
Of Ellesmere thou wert thinking; so was I.