A Selection of Original Songs, Scraps, Etc., by Ned Farmer/The Confession
I have long determined that I would, at some period or other, (as the only possible atonement now in my power) divulge to the public the dreadful secret contained in the following confession—
Years of overwhelming grief and unmitigated misery have entirely failed in at all assuaging the bitter regrets of this crime-tortured bosom.
Those who have been much in my society, cannot have failed to notice the frequent fits of melancholy abstraction to which I am subject. The following painful disclosure will at once serve to elucidate the retributive nature of those visitations—
And oh, my very soul sickens when I think how many, whom I have been proud to consider as my friends, will shudder, when they ascertain that this hand, which they (in the kindness of their hearts) have so warmly pressed, has been stained with; but I will not anticipate!
The Confession.
It was a damp, cold, foggy, drizzly night,
The moon half gave, and half witheld her light,
The hour approaching twelve, the month November:
And tho' 'tis years a-gone, I still remember
The fearful doings of that night, as well
As tho' 'twere yesterday on which it fell.
Its bare remembrance makes my blood run cold,
But conscience dictates, and it shall be told!
Oh! would in mercy this poor brain were freed
From recollections of that horrid deed!
I've said, 'twas night, returning from a friend's,
(So ever joy, with some sad sorrow blends,)
We had been spending a gay happy night,
My head, my heart, my pockets—all were light.
Prudence had whisper'd of the coming day,
And so, unknown to all, I stole away;
My gun—(I had been shooting on that day,)
(Would it had been ten thousand miles away,)
I carried loaded!—oh most dire mishap,
That e'er I made in Foden's fence a gap.
To make the distance less, my way I took
Over the fields by way of Brockley's brook;
When crossing Vincent's close, before me stood
Between the Gibbet-lane and Wadley's wood,
The figure of a man!—his outstretch'd arms
To intercept me, raised my worst alarms.
Behind me, too, quick hurrying steps came on,
I felt, all hope of an escape was gone!
What fiend impelled—what monster coined the thought?
Enough to tell—the fatal gun I caught.
Raised to my shoulder, and—my eye-balls start—
I fired the murderous charge right thro' his heart!
As I supposed; but truth demands these words—
It was a scarecrow, set to frighten birds!
The coming steps I'd heard, with shame I must confess,
Was Allen's drunken cowman—neither more nor less,
Who having joined me, said, as homeward we were walking,
"I say, what made you shoot at Mr. Vincent's mawkin?"
To-morrow is the food on which procrastination lives: 'tis also the day on which idle men work and fools reform!
Who, in the possession of happiness, would be mad enough to prefer an hour to a day; a day to a week; a week to a month; or a month to a year? yet is time preferred to eternity!
Lose the key of the cellar, spoil the lock of the cupboard, button up your breeches pocket; give a month's notice thereof, and then count your friends!
Our actions should be such only as our enemies would never allude to!
The tear of pity is a distillation of the soul, and bears a heavenly quality about it!
Books to mankind are as the flowers to the bee. Read, therefore; I conjure ye, read! Seeing that the spring and summer of your life is the proper season for laying in an useful stock of knowledge, which, to the mind, like the well-stored hive to the bee, is a source of sustenance, when the cold, and otherwise dreary winter of "old age" sets in!