The Poetical Works of Ebenezer Elliott :: :: University of Virginia Library

What is that flesh-bound spectre,
Whose thoughts none understand?
The sleeping mastiff heareth
The shunn'd of every land.
The spirit in his famish'd eyes,
Seems bare to sun and sky;
And insolence grows mad with pride,
When that sad form comes nigh.

In every clime and country
There lives a man of pain,
Whose nerves, like chords of lightning,
Bring fire into his brain;
To him a whisper is a wound,
A look or sneer a blow;
More pangs he feels in years or months
Than dunce-throng'd ages know.

Yet Pity speaks, like Hatred,
Of him, where'er he goes;
As if his soul were marble,
Men polish it with woes.

102

Though soft and warm as “weeping blood,”
And true, his heart, as truth,
They coffin winter in his thoughts,
And crown with snow his youth.

He drinks the wine of curses,
He eats reproach for bread,
The fire unblown of slander
Is flame upon his head:
So, in to-morrow's unmade grave,
He counts life's heavy hours;
While rancour makes his bed of snakes,
And mockery calls them flowers.

Amid the bless'd a stranger,
Or foodless with his mate;
From home and hope an exile,
Or paid for love with hate;
All lonely by some throng'd fireside,
Or homeless in his home;
Well may he wish to herd with wolves,
Or marry ocean's foam.

“Why was I given in marriage?
Said Love, when he was born:
Behold him! the Benoni
Of glory's natal morn!

103

The mind of man shall be his shroud;
His life is deathless death;
Bleach'd on the surge of endless years,
He sighs—and hath no breath.

Why marvel that his spirit
Seems dry as dead men's bones?
That maidens fear his gestures,
And start to hear his tones?
Why marvel that, with maniac steps,
He moveth fast and slow,
If he was call'd a man of grief
Six thousand years ago?

By Babylonian rivers,
In Israel's dreadful day,
With soul bow'd like the willows,
For prostrate Solyma,
He, saddest, sweetest bard of all
Whom God's dark wing had swept
From pride into captivity,
Remembering Zion, wept.

Ere Rome was, he wrote ballads
On Troy, the fate-o'erthrown;
And he will sigh for London,
In manless ruin strown;

104

Then o'er Australia, hungering,
Poor waif of land and sea,
Ask bread through valleys yet unbuilt,
Where London is to be.

Or from some Pandour'd palace,
That looks o'er slaves afar,
Say to his royal legions—
“Go, tame the earth with war!”
That unborn scribes may write again
The tale of chain'd or free,
Unless mankind, meantime, recant
Their blood-idolatry.

Behold him! say what art thou
Whose thoughts none understand?
The sleeping mastiff hears thee,
Thou scorn'd of every land.
Famine, that laid thy vitals bare
To wind, and sun, and sky,
Sees nothing sadder than thy cheek,
Or wilder than thine eye.

What art thou? Did thy boyhood
Cull shells on Severn's side?
Art thou “the wondrous stripling
That perish'd in his pride?”

105

Or art thou he whom wonder call'd
The Avonian's youthful peer,
The second Shakspeare? Bread! O Bread!
Poor Otway!—it is here.

Thou changest—Art thou Dante,
The famed in peace and war,
Whom weeps ungrateful Florence,
Beneath her mournful star?
Then hast thou known “how sad the sound
Of feet on strangers' stairs—
How bitter strangers' bread” to him
Who eats it, and despairs!

Thou changest—Trampled Hargraves!
Rejoin thy nameless dust;
Not even to the lifeless
Will cruel man be just.
Changed! thought-worn Crompton! thy sad face
Casts gloom on cloudless day;
Fool, even in death! why linger here,
Trade's meek reproach?—away!

Thou changest—Art thou Byron,
Who barter'd peace for stone?
And did'st thou wed a shadow,
To perish all alone?

106

Changed! Art thou he, once many-thron'd,
Who wifeless, sonless, died,
While son and wife, walk'd, clad in smiles,
His paltry foe beside!

Again thou changest. Sad one!
How want-worn is thine hand!
No diadem thou wearest,
Thou scorn'd of every land!
The eagle in thy famish'd eyes,
Looks faintly on the sky;
And insult waxeth red with rage,
When thy pale form draws nigh.