Sonnets and Other Small Poems :: :: University of Virginia Library

In this wide waste of heritable care,
Where every breathing clod its portion gains;
Let Man contentless mourn his partial share,
And, wayward, swell the burden he sustains.

Let him in sombrous colours paint his lot,
Darken'd with fraud, and calumny, and strife,
The shaft of malice, hard oppression's plot,
And all the hydra-headed ills of life.

More cruel far the woes frail Women weep,
Besieging ever their unfriended state;
In whose soft breast affliction sinks more deep,
Misfortune presses with resistless weight.

Nor are they only helpless to sustain
Those heavy evils hardier Manhood bears,
Not only from his wiles with sharper pain
Waste—but his insults draw their bitter tears.

He, who was form'd as champion to the fair,
To shelter every female as his ward;
He, most perfidious, weaves a ruffian snare,
And robs the treasure he was meant to guard.—

Where lucid Severn rolls her rapid tide
By the near borders of the Cambrian coast,
There did the lovely Anna once reside,
The village beauty, and the village boast.

Long had her father from his well-stock'd field
Serv'd the near mart with vegetable store;
And what one corner would of flowerets yield,
In posied wreaths his blooming daughter bore.

And many a penny did she homeward bring,
And with it many a little dittied tale,
While round her mother's neck she lov'd to cling,
And hear of lovers false, and damsels frail.

For oft the lessons of maternal love
Had caution'd her man's faithless sex to shun;
But ere experience could the danger prove,
Her anxious mother's thread of life was spun.

Then pious truths a father's care instill'd,
And blest the heart that still those truths retain'd;
A father grateful as the soil he till'd,
A daughter lovely as the flow'rs she train'd.

Too lovely she, too gentle was her sire,
In this ungenial clime to flourish long;
A boon companion of the neighb'ring squire
Had oft beheld her in the sunday-throng;

Had mark'd her beauties with the lawless eye
Of latent artifice, and loose desire:—
And where this fever of the blood runs high,
Conscience is seldom call'd to quench the fire.

But female vigilance and parent-care
Had long eluded every fraudful plan;
Till urg'd by rage, by passion, by despair,
He dar'd to violate the laws of man:

Dar'd, by compulsive force, to bear away
The fainting victim from her fostering shed,
While her poor father had been forc'd to stray
From his own hamlet in pursuit of bread.

Nor did a single tiding reach his ear
Where he might turn his trembling arm to save,
Till two sad months of agony severe
Brought his ‘grey hairs with sorrow to the grave.’

While thou, fair hapless Anna, still enthrall'd
By the fierce mandate of licentious love,
(Of brutal lust, oh! rather be it call'd)
Far from thine orphan home wert made to rove:

To dwell beneath a ruthless villain's eye,
By threats and promises alternate sway'd,
Till on the latter seeming to rely,
Thy virgin honour was at length betray'd;

Thyself forsaken, and in want consign'd
To grinning infamy, and dire disgrace;
Without a friend to sooth thy tortur'd mind,
Yet fearing to approach thy native place.

For too too oft, and fatally I fear,
The alter'd aspect of a female eye
Has check'd pale penitence, with frown severe,
And turn'd her joyless footstep still awry.

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And tho' I grieve against thy sex to urge
One practis'd fault that mercy must deplore,
Yet is it wrong to wield an earthly scourge
Against that breast which heav'n has pierc'd before.

When injur'd beauty heaves the midnight moan,
And bathes her pillow in repentant dew;
With sweeter slumbers might it crown your own,
To dry the tear and calm the mind anew.

Blest were the recompense yourselves must share,
Who turn to virtue's path the wilder'd way;
While stern contempt, or ridicule's pert stare,
Can only lead the wanderer more astray.—

Thus on the confines of her native vales,
Dreading to enter them, sad Anna stray'd;
But when a father's fate her heart assails,
She burns her base betrayer to upbraid.

101

Stung by her wrongs, his hated porch she gain'd,
To speak aloud the wildness of her woes,
Believ'd the story of his absence feign'd,
And fled thro' every room with frenzied throes:

But he had stol'n from his seductive haunt,
In other scenes to practise other crimes;
While she, poor Sufferer, pines in guilty want,
And he, calm Villain, flaunts in foreign climes.—

O lust, thou canker of the human heart,
When thus indulg'd in all thy lawless sway,
Such wringing woe shall prove thy just desert,
As fills the murderer's bosom with dismay.

Ye heirs of manhood! check its baneful rage,
And ere your souls have lost all sense of truth;
Pity the parent-agonies of age,
Pity the unavailing pangs of youth.

102

Lest other maids like Anna prove unblest,
Tho' form'd with countless graces to engage;
Erewhile the fondling of a father's breast,
The prattling solace of his hoary age.

Lest they, like her, too harshly doom'd to bear
The private slander and the public scorn;
In all the maniac wildness of despair,
Are made to curse the day themselves were born.

While man, the fell despoiler of their peace,
The vaunting author of their lingering shame,
Bids not e'en here his savage conquests cease,
But wades thro' vice as tho' its meed was fame.

107

WRITTEN IN AN EVENING STROLL TO TWYFORD CHURCH.

“In lonely walks your happy freedom bless,
Tis a vacation and divine recess.”
EPICT. ENCHIRID.

By yon brown copse, where many a tuneful throat
Securely carols thro' the live-long day;
Soft let me catch the wildly-warbled note,
And tune my numbers to the woodland lay.

Or by the side of this embowering slope
Where, seldom press'd, the pathway winds along;
While solemn silence gives reflection scope,
Here let me rather breathe a serious song.

Here, as the glowing cheek of modest Eve
With blush purpurean melts to sober gray,
Pleas'd let me see her take her graceful leave,
And sigh to find how soon she fades away.

108

Sigh to reflect, so life's enchantments bloom,
So for a transient season charm the sight,
Then quick dissolving into fearful gloom,
Sink in mortality's sepulchral night.—

Thus wrapt in thought I meditative stray,
Cross the rude stile, and loitering thro' the lane,
Pause to observe where mid the elm-girt way
Gleams the meek roof of Twyford's humble fane.

Where no arch'd dome, no tesselated floor,
On vacant sense with such attraction glares,
That curiosity may pause her hour,
And for the temple's sake endure the pray'rs.

No sculptur'd grandeur or pictorial art
Around this altar gives amazement birth;
No choral warblings catch the half-wean'd heart,
To make it linger on the lures of earth.

109

No papal splendours deck the pompous shrine;
Yet here devotion bends the grateful knee,
Here suppliant pray'r and soaring praises join
To waft their incense, bounteous Heav'n, to thee!

Here too the soul its noblest task may learn,
With calmness to resign this coil of clay;
May drink instruction from the tear-dew'd urn,
And many a record that bestrews the way.

May see, however worth or talents grace,
From death's strong grasp no excellence can fly;
Impetuous wit must bear the cold embrace,
And with insensate dulness mouldering lie.

And this warm heart, by past affliction taught
To fear the bodings which it can't dispel;
Tho' now with many an earthly blessing fraught,
With many that perhaps it loves too well:

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This heaving heart must feel its joys expire,
Must shortly give them to the senseless mould;
Or else (O fate more worthy of desire)
Must sink itself beneath a cell as cold.

Tho' e'en should sickness spare untimely doom,
And life to life's last limit wearied creep,
Lost all its strength, as faded all its bloom,
The tare-sown plains of age we feebly reap:

Yet, as the sun the wintry landscape cheers,
Let but religion beam on life's decline,
Let virtue's lustre grace the brow of years,
As now they gild a parent's, brighten mine.

And whether sudden blast or slow decay
Shall bid our human ‘bud of being’ cease;
Mercy may beam its renovating ray,
And faith transplant us to perennial peace.