WHAT! and not one to heave the pious sigh! Not one whose sorrow-swoln and aching eye For social scenes, for life's endearments fled, Shall drop a tear and dwell upon the dead! Poor wretched outcast! I will weep for thee, And sorrow for forlorn humanity. Yes, I will weep; but not that thou art come To the stern sabbath of the silent tomb: For squalid want, and the black scorpion care, Heart-withering fiends! shall never enter there. I sorrow for the ills thy life has known, As through the world's long pilgrimage, alone, Haunted by poverty and woe-begone, Unloved, unfriended, thou didst journey on: Thy youth in ignorance and labour past, And thine old age all barrenness and blast! Hard was thy fate, which, while it doomed to woe, Denied thee wisdom to support the blow; And robbed of all its energy thy mind, Ere yet it cast thee on thy fellow-kind, Abject of thought, the victim of distress, To wander in the world's wide wilderness. Poor outcast, sleep in peace! the wintry storm Blows bleak no more on thine unsheltered form; Thy woes are past; thou restest in the tomb;— I pause—and ponder on the days to come. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...LEARNING TO READ by FRANCES ELLEN WATKINS HARPER JOSEPH'S COAT by GEORGE HERBERT THE TARRY BUCCANEER by JOHN MASEFIELD LOVE'S JUSTIFICATION by MICHELANGELO BUONARROTI TO A DOG by JOSEPHINE PRESTON PEABODY REBECCA'S HYMN, FR. IVANHOE by WALTER SCOTT DERELICT; A REMINISCENCE OF R.L.S.'S TREASURE ISLAND by YOUNG EWING ALLISON |