Many, I believe, there are Who live a life of virtuous decency, Men who can hear the Decalogue and feel No self-reproach; who of the moral law Established in the land where they abide Are strict observers; and not negligent In acts of love to those with whom they dwell, Their kindred, and the children of their blood. Praise be to such, and to their slumbers peace!
But of the poor man ask, the abject poor; Go, and demand of him, if there be here In this cold abstinence from evil deeds,
And these inevitable charities,
Wherewith to satisfy the human soul?
No man is dear to man; the poorest poor Long for some moments in a weary life
When they can know and feel that they have been, Themselves, the fathers and the dealers-out
Of some small blessings; have been kind to such As needed kindness, for this single cause,
That we have all of us one human heart. -Such pleasure is to one kind Being known, My neighbour, when with punctual care, each week Duly as Friday comes, though pressed herself By her own wants, she from her store of meal Takes one unsparing handful for the scrip
Of this old Mendicant, and, from her door Returning with exhilarated heart,
Sits by her fire, and builds her hope in heaven. Then let him pass, a blessing on his head! And while in that vast solitude to which The tide of things has borne him, he appears To breathe and live but for himself alone, Unblamed, uninjured, let him bear about The good which the benignant law of Heaven Has hung around him: and, while life is his, Still let him prompt the unlettered villagers To tender offices and pensive thoughts.
- Then let him pass, a blessing on his head! And, long as he can wander, let him breathe The freshness of the valleys; let his blood Struggle with frosty air and winter snows; And let the chartered wind that sweeps the heath Beat his grey locks against his withered face. Reverence the hope whose vital anxiousness Gives the last human interest to his heart. May never HOUSE, misnamed of INDUSTRY, Make him a captive! - for that pent-up din, Those life-consuming sounds that clog the air, Be his the natural silence of old age! Let him be free of mountain solitudes;
And have around him, whether heard or not,
The pleasant melody of woodland birds. Few are his pleasures: if his eyes have now Been doomed so long to settle upon earth That not without some effort they behold The countenance of the horizontal sun, Rising or setting, let the light at least Find a free entrance to their languid orbs. And let him, where and when he will, sit down Beneath the trees, or on a grassy bank
Of highway side, and with the little birds Share his chance-gathered meal; and, finally, As in the eye of Nature he has lived, So in the eye of Nature let him die!
ANIMAL TRANQUILLITY AND DECAY
THE little hedgerow birds,
That peck along the roads, regard him not. He travels on, and in his face, his step, His gait, is one expression: every limb,
His look and bending figure, all bespeak
A man who does not move with pain, but moves With thought. He is insensibly subdued To settled quiet: he is one by whom
All effort seems forgotten; one to whom Long patience hath such mild composure given, That patience now doth seem a thing of which He hath no need. He is by nature led To peace so perfect that the young behold With envy, what the Old Man hardly feels.
Brutus will start a Spirit as soon as Cæsar!
Written at Alfoxden. Founded upon an anecdote, which I read in a newspaper, of an ass being found hanging his head over a canal in a wretched posture. Upon examination a dead body was found in the water and proved to be the body of its master. The countenance, gait, and figure of Peter, were taken from a wild rover with whom I walked from Builth, on the river Wye, downwards nearly as far as the town of Hay. He told me strange stories. It has always been a pleasure to me through life to catch at every opportunity that has occurred in my rambles of becoming acquainted with this class of people. The number of Peter's wives was taken from the trespasses in this way of a lawless creature who lived in the county of Durham, and used to be attended by many women, sometimes not less than half a dozen, as disorderly as himself. Benoni, or the child of sorrow, I knew when I was a school-boy. His mother had been deserted by a gentleman in the neighbourhood, she herself being a gentlewoman by birth. The circumstances of her story were told me by my dear old Dame, Anne Tyson, who was her confidante. The Lady died broken-hearted. In the woods of Alfoxden I used to take great delight in noticing the habits, tricks, and physiognomy of asses; and I have no doubt that I was thus put upon writing the poem out of liking for the creature that is so often
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