PART I.

Confiteor facere hoc annos; sed et altera causa est,
Anxietas animi, continuusque dolor. 
          
                                     Ovid.
             -------------------

Magistrate, vagrant, Constable, &c.

Vagrant.

Take, take away thy barbarous hand,
And let me to thy Master speak;
Remit awhile the harsh command,
And hear me, or my heart will break.

Magistrate.

Fond wretch! and what canst thou relate,
But deeds of sorrow, shame, and sin? 
Thy crime is proved, thou know’st thy fate;
But come, thy tale!—­begin, begin! —

Vagrant.

My crime!—­This sick’ning child to feed. 
I seized the food, your witness saw;
I knew your laws forbade the deed,
But yielded to a stronger law.

Know’st thou, to Nature’s great command
All human laws are frail and weak? 
Nay! frown not—­stay his eager hand,
And hear me, or my heart will break.

In this, th’ adopted babe I hold
With anxious fondness to my breast,
My heart’s sole comfort I behold,
More dear than life, when life was blest;
I saw her pining, fainting, cold,
I begg’d—­but vain was my request.

I saw the tempting food, and seized —
My infant-sufferer found relief;
And in the pilfer’d treasure pleased,
Smiled on my guilt, and hush’d my grief.

But I have griefs of other kind,
Troubles and sorrows more severe;
Give me to ease my tortured mind,
Lend to my woes a patient ear;
And let me—­if I may not find
A friend to help—­find one to hear.

Yet nameless let me plead—­my name
Would only wake the cry of scorn;
A child of sin, conceived in shame,
Brought forth in woe, to misery born.

My mother dead, my father lost,
I wander’d with a vagrant crew;
A common care, a common cost;
Their sorrows and their sins I knew;
With them, by want on error forced,
Like them, I base and guilty grew.

Few are my years, not so my crimes;
The age which these sad looks declare,
Is Sorrow’s work, it is not Time’s,
And I am old in shame and care.

Taught to believe the world a place
Where every stranger was a foe,
Train’d in the arts that mark our race,
To what new people could I go? 
Could I a better life embrace,
Or live as virtue dictates?  No! —

So through the land I wandering went,
And little found of grief or joy;
But lost my bosom’s sweet content
When first I loved the Gipsy-Boy.

A sturdy youth he was and tall,
His looks would all his soul declare;
His piercing eyes were deep and small,
And strongly curl’d his raven-hair.

Yes, Aaron had each manly charm,
All in the May of youthful pride,
He scarcely fear’d his father’s arm,
And every other arm defied. —