Through the wrung bosom of the dying man,—
His wife, his children, and his friends unseen.
In vain for him the' officious wife prepares
The fire fair-blazing and the vestment warm;
In vain his little children, peeping out
Into the mingling storm, demand their sire
With tears of artless innocence. Alas!
Nor wife, nor children, more shall he behold,
Nor friends, nor sacred home. On every nerve
The deadly Winter seizes; shuts up sense;
And, o'er his inmost vitals creeping cold,
Lays him along the snows a stiffen'd corse,
Stretch'd out and bleaching in the northern blast.
AH! little think the gay licentious proud,
Whom pleasure, power, and affluence surround;
They who their thoughtless hours in giddy mirth
And wanton, often cruel, riot waste;—
Ah! little think they, while they dance along,
How many feel, this very moment, death
And all the sad variety of pain:
How many sink in the devouring flood,
Or more devouring flame: how many bleed
By shameful variance betwixt man and man:
How many pine in want and dungeon-glooms,
Shut from the common air and common use
Of their own limbs: how many drink the cup
Of baleful grief, or eat the bitter bread
Of misery sore pierced by wintry winds,
How many shrink into the sordid hut
Of cheerless poverty: how many shake
With all the fiercer tortures of the mind,-
Unbounded passion, madness, guilt, remorse;