Rhymes and Recollections of a Hand-Loom Weaver :: :: University of Virginia Library

“I shall just mention another incident, though, in point of order, it should have been told before. After many months of hopeless wanderings, my family and I at length found a settled home at Inverury. Comparative rest and warmth succeeding to watchful misery, we were, one and all, afflicted with dishealth. Willie, especially, suffered long, and at last had to be conveyed to the Aberdeen infirmary. There he had to undergo a serious operation. I knew his timid nature, and went thither to sustain and comfort him through that severe trial. The operation took place a day earlier than that mentioned to me, so it was over ere I arrived. I found him asleep in his little chamber, and the feelings of that moment are partially embodied in the following lines:—”

“Hospital charities for devastated homes! Faugh! Give me my wages; have I not laboured?”

Wake ye, sleep ye, my hapless boy,
In this homeless house of care?
Lack ye the warmth of a mother's eye
On thy cauldrife lonely lair?

Dost thou clasp in thy dream a brother's hand,
Yet waken thee all alone?
Thy deep dark eye, does it open unblest?
Nor father?—nor sister? None!

Thy father's board is too narrow, my child,
For ills like thine to be there;
The comfortless hearth of thy parent is cold,
And his light but the light of despair.

Has God disown'd them, the children of toil?
Is the promise of Heaven no more?
Shall Industry weep?—shall the pamper'd suppress
The sweat-earned bread of the poor?

Alas! and the wind as it blew and blew
On the famished and houseless then,
Has blighted the bud of my heart's best hope,
And it never may blossom again.

'Twas so. In my very, very heart, I found it. Who are they that beat about in the substanceless regions of fancy for material to move a tear? Who but the silken bandaged sons of comfort?—ink-bleeders whose sorrows are stereotyped—they who see life only through the hazy medium of theory, and do at farthest obtain but a mellow blink of those sickening realities that settle around the poor man's hearth.