O had I the wings of a dove, How soon would I taste you again! My sorrows I then might assuage In the ways of religion and truth; Might learn from the wisdom of age, And be cheered by the sallies of youth. Religion! what treasure untold Ye winds, that have made me your sport, Convey to this desolate shore Some cordial endearing report Of a land I shall visit no more! My friends,-do they now and then send A wish or a thought after me ?Oh tell me I yet have a friend, Though a friend I am never to see! How fleet is a glance of the mind! Compar'd with the speed of its flight, The tempest itself lags behind, And the swift-winged arrows of light! When I think of my own native land Soon hurries me back to despair! But the sea-fowl is gone to her nest, And I to my cabin repair. REV. GEORGE CRABBE BORN 1754. DIED 1832. —0— PRINCIPAL WRITINGS:-The Village; The Parish Register; The Borough; Tales in Verse; Tales of the Hall. 101 English Peasant. (From "The Parish Register.") To pomp and pageantry in nought allied, A noble peasant, Isaac Ashford, died. Of no man's presence Isaac felt afraid, I mark'd his action, when his infant died, If pride were his, 'twas not their vulgar pride Who, in their base contempt, the great deride: Nor pride in learning-though my clerk agreed, If fate should call him, Ashford might succeed ;Nor pride in rustic skill, although he knew None his superior, and his equals few :But if that spirit in his soul had place, It was the jealous pride that shuns disgrace; A pride in honest fame, by virtue gain'd; In sturdy boys to virtuous labours train'd; Pride, in the power that guards his country's coast, And all that Englishmen enjoy and boast ; Pride, in a life that slander's tongue defied; In fact a noble passion, mis-named pride. I feel his absence in the hours of prayer, And view his seat, and sigh for Isaac there; I see no more those white locks, thinly spread J. CUNNINGHAM. 101 The Fox and the Cat. HE fox and the cat, as they travelled one day, With moral discourses cut shorter the way; ""Tis great," says the fox, "to make justice our guide !" "How god-like is mercy!" Grimalkin replied. Whilst thus they proceeded, a wolf from the wood, Impatient of hunger, and thirsting for blood, Rushed forth-as he saw the dull shepherd asleepAnd seized for his supper an innocent sheep. "In vain, wretched victim, for mercy you bleat; "What a wretch!" says the cat-"'tis the vilest of brutes; Does he feed upon flesh when there's herbage and roots?" Cries the fox, "While our oaks give us acorns so good, What a tyrant is this, to spill innocent blood!" Well, onward they marched, and they moralised still, Till they came where some poultry picked chaff by a mill. Sly Reynard surveyed them with gluttonous eyes, A spider that sat in her web on the wall, Perceived the poor victims, and pitied their fall: She cried, "Of such murders how guiltless am I !" So ran to regale on a new-taken fly! |