Should I reveal the source of every grief,
If soft humanity e'er touched your breast,
Your hands would not withhold the kind relief,
And tears of pity could not be repressed.
Heaven sends misfortunes,--why should we repine?
'T is Heaven has brought me to the state you see:
And your condition may be soon like mine,
The child of sorrow and of misery.
A little farm was my paternal lot,
Then, like the lark, I sprightly hailed the morn;
But ah! oppression forced me from my cot;
My cattle died, and blighted was my corn.
My daughter,--once the comfort of my age!
Lured by a villain from her native home,
Is cast, abandoned, on the world's wild stage,
And doomed in scanty poverty to roam.
My tender wife,--sweet soother of my care!--
Struck with sad anguish at the stern decree,
Fell,--lingering fell, a victim to despair,
And left the world to wretchedness and me.
Pity the sorrows of a poor old man!
Whose trembling limbs have born him to your door,
Whose days are dwindled to the shortest span,
O, give relief, and Heaven will bless your store.
THOMAS MOSS.
A ROUGH RHYME ON A ROUGH MATTER.
THE ENGLISH GAME LAWS.
The merry brown hares came leaping
Over, the crest of the hill,
Where the clover and corn lay sleeping,
Under the moonlight still.
Leaping late and early,
Till under their bite and their tread,
The swedes, and the wheat, and the barley
Lay cankered, and trampled, and dead.
A poacher's widow sat sighing
On the side of the white chalk bank,
Where, under the gloom of fire-woods,
One spot in the lea throve rank.
Pages:
122
123
124
125
126
127
128
129
130
131
132
133
134
135
136
137
138
139
140
141
142
143
144
145
146