Fair legal interests, bonds and mortgages,

Ships to the east and west.

So hardly of the dead?

S. Why judge you then

T. For what he left
Undone;- for sins not one of which is mention'd
In the ten commandments. He, I warrant him,
Believ'd no other gods than those of the Creed;
Bow'd to no idols—but his money bags;
Swore no false oaths—except at a custom house;
Kept the Sabbath idle; built a monument
To honour his dead father; did no murder ;
Was too old-fashion'd to commit adultery;
Never pick'd pockets; never bore false witness;
And never, with that all-commanding wealth,
Coveted his neighbour's house, nor ox, nor ass.
S. You knew him, then, it seems?

T. As all men know
The virtues of your hundred-thousanders!
They never hide their lights beneath a bushel.
S. Nay, nay, uncharitable sir; for often
Doth bounty, like a streamlet, flow unseen,
Freshening and giving life along its course.

T. We track the streamlet by the brighter green And livelier growth it gives: but as for thisThis was a pool that stagnated and stunk; The rains of heaven engendered nothing in it But slime and foul corruption.

S. Yet even these

Are reservoirs, whence public charity
Still keeps her channels full.

T. Now, sir, you touch

Upon the point. This man of half a million

Had all these public virtues which you praise:
But the poor man rung never at his door;
And the old beggar, at the public gate,

Who, all the summer long, stands, hat in hand,
He knew how vain it was to lift an eye
To that hard face. Yet he was always found
Among your ten and twenty-pound subscribers,
Your benefactors in the newspapers.

His alms were money put to interest
In the other world,-donations, to keep open
A running charity-account with heaven:
Retaining fees against the last assizes,

When, for the trusted talents, strict account

Shall be required from all, and the old Arch-Lawyer Plead his own cause as plaintiff.

Believe you,

sir:

S. I must needs these are your witnesses, These mourners here, who from their carriages Gape at the gaping crowd. A good March wind Were to be prayed for now, to lend their eyes Some decent rheum. The very hireling mute Bears not a face blanker of all emotion

Than the old servant of the family!

How can this man have lived, that thus his death
Costs not the soiling one white handkerchief?

T. Who should lament for him, sir, in whose heart Love had no place, nor natural charity?

The parlour spaniel, when she heard his step,
Rose slowly from the hearth, and stole aside
With creeping pace; she never raised her eyes
To woo kind words from him, nor laid her head
Upraised upon his knee, with fondling whine.

How could it be but thus?

Arithmetic

Was the sole science he was ever taught.
The multiplication-table was his Creed,
His Pater-noster, and his Decalogue.

When yet he was a boy, and should have breathed
The open
air and sunshine of the fields,

To give his blood its natural spring and play,
He, in a close and dusky counting-house,

Smoke-dried and sear'd and shrivell'd up his heart.
So, from the way in which he was train'd up
His feet departed not; he toiled and moil'd,

Poor muck-worm! through his threescore years and

ten.

And when the earth shall now be shovell'd on him,
If that which served him for a soul were still
Within its husk, 'twould still be—dirt to dirt.
S. Yet your next newspapers will blazon him
For industry and honourable wealth,

A bright example.

T. Even half a million

Gets him no other praise. But come this way
Some twelve months hence, and you will find his

virtues

Trimly set forth in lapidary lines;

Faith, with her torch beside, and little Cupids

Dropping upon his urn their marble tears.

SOUTHEY.

74. THE POPLAR FIELD.

THE poplars are fell'd! farewell to the shade,
And the whispering sound of the cool colonnade ·
The winds play no longer and sing in the leaves,
Nor Ouse on his bosom their image receives.

Twelve years have elapsed since I last took a view
Of my favourite field and the bank where they grew ;
And now in the grass behold they are laid,

And the tree is my seat that once lent me a shade. The blackbird has fled to another retreat,

Where the hazels afford him a screen from the heat;
And the scene, where his melody charm'd me before,
Resounds with his sweet flowing ditty no more.

My fugitive years are all hasting away,
And I must ere long lie as lowly as they,
With a turf on my breast, and a stone at my head,
Ere another such grove shall arise in its stead.
'Tis a sight to engage me, if anything can,
To muse on the perishing pleasures of man;
Though his life be a dream, his enjoyments, I see,
Have a being less durable even than he.

COWPER.

HE

75. GREECE.

[From THE GIAOUR.]

E who hath bent him o'er the dead
Ere the first day of death is fled,-
The first dark day of nothingness,
The last of danger and distress,-

(Before decay's defacing fingers

Have swept the lines where beauty lingers,)
And mark'd the mild angelic air,
The rapture of repose that's there,
The fix'd yet tender.traits that streak
The languor of the placid cheek,-
And—but for that sad shrouded eye,
That fires not, wins not, weeps not, now,
And but for that chill changeless brow,
Where cold obstruction's apathy
Appals the gazing mourner's heart,
As if to him it could impart

The doom he dreads, yet dwells upon;
Yes, but for these, and these alone,
Some moments, ay, one treacherous hour,
He still might doubt the tyrant's power,
So fair, so calm, so softly seal'd,
The first, last look by death reveal'd!
Such is the aspect of this shore;

'Tis Greece, but living Greece no more!
So coldly sweet, so deadly fair,
We start, for soul is wanting there.
Hers is the loveliness in death,

That parts not quite with parting breath;
But beauty with that fearful bloom,
That hue which haunts it to the tomb;
Expression's last receding ray,

A gilded halo hovering round decay,

The farewell beam of feeling past away;

Spark of that flame, perchance of heavenly birth,

Which gleams, but warms no more its cherish'd earth!