Nugae Canorae :: :: University of Virginia Library

Turn not thy dim eyes to the stormy sea,
Thou wretched mourner! for thy Child is gone;
Gone, never to return! Goaded by ills,
Which poor mortality may not endure,
Unshrinking, he hath left his native land,
His native home, all the dear charities
Of brother, son, and friend! and more than these,
The inexplicable lingerings which endear
To the susceptible breast the scenes where first
It learn'd to feel, where young sensation gave
Mysterious import to the characters
Of Nature's volume! But he may not go
Without some sad memorial from the heart
Which knew him best, the heart which sadly mark'd
His full soul, and his vigorous spirit sink
Unmechaniz'd by pain!

And surely thou,
Deserted mother! for a while shalt feel
Some mingled solacings of gloomy joy,
When I relate his wrongs whom thou dost weep,
Yet living, lost for ever.

When a child,
His father died, and died with ear which long
Had drunk the pois'nous tale of calumny.
Five infants totter'd round the widow'd mother,
And he who should have screen'd them, ere he went
To the cold grave; them, and their feeble parent,
With alienated love had left his all
In stranger hands; had listen'd to a lie
Which robb'd their mother of a taintless name;
And the poor tremblers, e'en on life's hard verge,
Knew not a father's kind protection; eat,
Though affluence might have blest them, the scant meal
Uncertain; while their mother, with a heart
Torn, and misgiving of the future dole
Reluctantly supplied, hung o'er her babes
With sorrows heighten'd by a cruel sense
Of what she once had been, with agony

And unexpress'd despair. Meanwhile the fiends,
Who fram'd with slandering tongue the deadly tale,
That numb'd the fibres of the dying man,
E'en till he knew not pity, till he lost
All fleshly yearnings,—they did gorge their prey,
And hug their hidden treasure!

Scarce arriv'd
At manhood, soon as He began to feel,
He felt what injury and injustice are,
And bitter disappointment. He no friend
Possess'd; yet had a bosom that might own
All the varieties of social joy,
From meekest pity to the expansive swell
Of warm benevolence; from passion's throe,
To the holier interchange of kindred souls!
How has he struggled with the instinctive love
That led him to embrace his fellow men,
And bind them to his breast! I only knew
The ruins of his mind; yet have I seen
The smother'd tear for passing wretchedness!
I've seen the faint flush, and the pulse of pity,

Working on his poor cheek, e'en while he forc'd
The unnatural laugh of hard indifference
To cope with nature's pleadings! Oh, my God!
I have e'en heard him, with most strange perversion,
Brag that weak man was fashion'd by his Maker
To live a lonely, uncompanion'd thing;
That he was self-sufficient; that the smile
Of sweet affection was a very cheat,
And love's best energies impertinence:
While ever on his favourite household dog
He look'd such meanings of a hollow heart,
His rebel eye express'd such sad misgivings,
That all he spake fell flat upon the ear,
Self-contradicted.

With some scanty wrecks,
Snatch'd from his father's stores, he struggled long
To brave the world! enrolling his fair name
With those who seek, by jostling with mankind,
To gain some footing on this wretched earth.
But he, the adventurer's wild spontaneous life
Leading, with ardour ever prompt to act
The heart's quick impulses, had not (poor man)
Been school'd in all the subtleties of fraud;

In that nice lore of systematic lies,
Which commerce, unrelenting task-master,
Exacts from those who'd fatten on her smiles!
His manly reason could not tamely brook
To shrink and tremble, and annihilate
Its noblest energies, at the curst saws
Of mammon's sons—No; he had trod too long
His mortal path unbending and erect!
As well they may, in this world's difficult passage,
Who know not cunning's complicated schemes.
He fell, where each half-fashioned unripe knave
Is shuffled off by a more perfect villain.
His prospects blasted, his fair name traduc'd,
His very milk of human kindness turn'd
To pois'nous gall; distracted by the tears
Of his poor mother, and the sobs and prayers
Of brothers, sisters, who look'd up to him
For daily bread, he left his native land,
And with a mind resolved to endure
Through future life a most unnatural blank,
Sail'd o'er the element!

I saw him go
He said not aught that to the standers by
Betray'd a suffering one; but he did look!

Oh God! he look'd pale, stiff as a sear'd oak
Blanch'd by the lightning; and mute vacancy
Sat on his face, as no soul dwelt within!
He went; nor human ear hath heard of him!
Nor human tongue made mention of his name!
Oft I pass by his dwelling, vacant now;
And at such times I almost curse a world
That moulds to guilt the energetic soul
Of loftiest promise; and for saintly worth
Invents a discipline which ends in ruin!

The subject of the tale; whose name the Author has purposely omitted.