Thou too art dead, ——! very kind
        Hast thou been to me in my childish days,
        Thou best good creature.  I have not forgot
        How thou didst love thy Charles, when he was yet
        A prating schoolboy:  I have not forgot
        The busy joy on that important day,
        When, child-like, the poor wanderer was content
        To leave the bosom of parental love,
        His childhood’s play-place, and his early home,
        For the rude fosterings of a stranger’s hand,
        Hard uncouth tasks, and school-boy’s scanty fare. 
        How did thine eye peruse him round and round,
        And hardly know him in his yellow coats[3],
        Red leathern belt, and gown of russet blue! 
        Farewell, good aunt! 
        Go thou, and occupy the same grave-bed
        Where the dead mother lies. 
        Oh my dear mother, oh thou dear dead saint! 
        Where’s now that placid face, where oft hath sat
        A mother’s smile, to think her son should thrive
        In this bad world, when she was dead and gone;
        And when a tear hath sat (take shame, O son!)
        When that same child has prov’d himself unkind. 
        One parent yet is left—­a wretched thing,
        A sad survivor of his buried wife,
        A palsy-smitten, childish, old, old man,
        A semblance most forlorn of what he was,
        A merry cheerful man.  A merrier man,
        A man more apt to frame matter for mirth,
        Mad jokes, and anticks for a Christmas eve;
        Making life social, and the laggard time
        To move on nimbly, never yet did cheer
        The little circle of domestic friends.

February, 1797.

[Footnote 3:  The dress of Christ’s Hospital,]

WRITTEN A YEAR AFTER THE EVENTS

Alas! how am I chang’d!  Where be the tears,
The sobs, and forc’d suspensions of the breath,
And all the dull desertions of the heart,
With which I hung o’er my dead mother’s corse? 
Where be the blest subsidings of the storm
Within, the sweet resignedness of hope
Drawn heavenward, and strength of filial love
In which I bow’d me to my father’s will?

        My God, and my Redeemer! keep not thou
        My soul in brute and sensual thanklessness
        Seal’d up; oblivious ever of that dear grace,
        And health restor’d to my long-loved friend,
        Long-lov’d, and worthy known.  Thou didst not leave
        Her soul in death!  O leave not now, my Lord,
        Thy servants in far worse, in spiritual death! 
        And darkness blacker than those feared shadows
        Of the valley all must tread.  Lend us thy balms,
        Thou dear Physician of the sin-sick soul,
        And heal our cleansed bosoms of the wounds
        With which the world has pierc’d us thro’ and