With all this thrift they thrive not. All the care
Ingenious parsimony takes, but just
Saves the small inventory, bed, and stool,
Skillet, and old carved chest, from public sale.
They live, and live without extorted alms
From grudging hands; but other boast have none,
To soothe their honest pride, that scorns to beg,
Nor comfort else, but in their mutual love.
I praise you much, ye meek and gentle pair,
The third picture is from Wordsworth. His works, I need not say, abound with incidents from rustic life, interesting to the young, as well as with deep thoughts suggested by nature to those who have formed
"The glorious habit by which sense is made
Subservient still to moral purposes,
Auxiliar to divine."
But the instance I shall quote is one in which abject poverty, in a repulsive form, is made to touch a deep chord of human sympathy, and to help us to find a lesson of good in everything, even in the outcast pauper: —[1]
The Old Cumberland Beggar.
"Him from my childhood have I known; and then
He was so old, he seems not older now.
He travels on, a solitary man;
So helpless in appearance, that for him
The sauntering horseman throws not with a slack
And careless hand his alms upon the ground,
But stops, that he may safely lodge the coin
Within the old man's hat;
The toll-gate, when in summer at her door
She turns her wheel, if on the road she sees
The aged beggar coming, quits her work.
And lifts the latch for him that he may pass.
His staff trails with him; scarcely do his feet
Disturb the summer dust; he is so still
In look and motion, that the cottage curs,
Ere he has passed the door, will turn away,
Weary of barking at him. Boys and girls,
The vacant and the busy, maids and youths,
And urchins newly breeched—all pass him by;
Him even the slow-paced waggon leaves behind.
But deem not this man useless—
… … deem him not
- ↑ These extracts are not continuous—space would only allow of selections.
