Fixing his downcast eye, he many an hour And lifting up his head, he then would gaze Would he forget those beings, to whose minds, Till his eye streamed with tears. In this deep vale If thou be one whose heart the holy forms Of young imagination have kept pure, Stranger! henceforth be warned; and know, that pride, Howe'er disguised in its own majesty, Is littleness; that he, who feels contempt For any living thing, hath faculties Which he has never used; that thought with him Is in its infancy. The man, whose eye Is ever on himself, doth look on one, The least of nature's works, one who might move Instructed that true knowiedge leads to love, Who, in the silent hour of inward thought, THE FOSTER-MOTHER'S TALE. A Narration in Dramatic Blank Verse. But that entrance, Mother! FOSTER-MOTHER. Can no one hear? It is a perilous tale! No one. MARIA. FOSTER-MOTHER. My husband's father told it me, Poor old Leoni!—Angels rest his soul ! He was a woodman, and could fell and saw Beneath that tree, while yet it was a tree He found a baby wrapt in mosses, lined With thistle beards, and such small locks of wool As hang on brambles. Well, he brought him home, And reared him at the then Lord Velez' cost. And so the babe grew up a pretty boy, A pretty boy, but most unteachable— And never learnt a prayer, nor told a bead, But knew the names of birds, and mocked their notes, And whistled, as he were a bird himself: And all the autumn 'twas his only play To get the seeds of wild flowers, and to plant them A grey-haired man-he loved this little boy, So he became a very learned youth. But Oh! poor wretch !-he read, and read, and read, 'Till his brain turned-and ere his twentieth year, He had unlawful thoughts of many things: But yet his speech, it was so soft and sweet, Of all the heretical and lawless talk Which brought this judgment: so the youth was seized And once as he was working in the cellar, How sweet it were on lake or wild savannah, And wander up and down at liberty. |