Where a sight shall shuddering sorrow find.
Sad as the ruins of the human mind.
TIME, Morning.-SCENE, The Shore.
ONCE more to daily toil, once more to wear
The livery of shame, once more to search
With miserable task this savage shore!
O thou who mountest so triumphantly
In yonder heaven, beginning thy career
Of glory, O thou blessed sun! thy beams
Fall on me with the same benignant light
Here, at the farthest limits of the world,
And blasted as I am with infamy,
As when in better years poor Elinor
Gazed on thy glad uprise with eye
By guilt and sorrow, and the opening morn
Woke her from quiet sleep to days of peace.
In other occupation then I trod
The beach at eve; and then, when I beheld
The billows, as they rolled before the storm,
Burst on the rock, and rage, my timid soul
Shrunk at the perils of the boundless deep,
And heaved a sigh for suffering mariners;
Ah! little thinking I myself was doomed
To tempt the perils of the boundless deep,
An outcast, unbeloved and unbewailed.
Still wilt thou haunt me, Memory! still present The fields of England to my exiled eyes,
The joys which once were mine. Even now I see
The lowly, lovely dwelling; even now
Behold the woodbine clasping its white walls,
Where fearlessly the redbreasts chirped around
To ask their morning meal, and where at eve
I loved to sit, and watch the rook sail by,
And hear his hollow tone, what time he sought
The churchyard elm, that, with its ancient boughs
Full-foliaged, half concealed the house of God, -
That holy house where I so oft have heard
My father's voice explain the wondrous works
Of Heaven to sinful man. Ah! little deemed
His virtuous bosom that his shameless child
So soon should spurn the lesson; sink, the slave
Of Vice and Infamy, the hireling prey
Of brutal appetite; at length, worn out
With famine and the avenging scourge of guilt,
Should share dishonesty, yet dread to die!
Welcome, ye savage lands, ye barbarous climes, Where angry England sends her outcast sons!
I hail your joyless shores! My weary bark,
Long tempest-tossed on Life's inclement sea,
Here hails her haven; welcomes the drear scene,
The marshy plain, the brier-entangled wood,
And all the perils of a world unknown.
For Elinor has nothing new to fear
From cruel Fortune: all her rankling shafts, Barbed with disgrace and venomed with disease, Have pierced my bosom; and the dart of death Has lost its terrors to a wretch like me.
Welcome, ye marshy heaths, ye pathless woods,
Where the rude native rests his wearied frame
Beneath the sheltering shade; where, when the storm
Benumbs his naked limbs, he flies to seek
The dripping shelter! Welcome, ye wild plains,
Unbroken by the plough, undelved by hand
Of patient rustic; where, for lowing herds
And for the music of the bleating flocks,
Alone is heard the kangaroo's sad note,
Deepening in distance! Welcome, wilderness,
Nature's domain! for here, as yet unknown
The comforts and the crimes of polished life,
Nature benignly gives to all enough,
Denies to all a superfluity.
What though the garb of infamy I wear,
Though day by day along the echoing beach
I gather wave-worn shells; yet day by day
I earn in honesty my frugal food,
And lay me down at night to calm repose;
No more condemned, the mercenary tool
Of brutal lust, while heaves the indignant heart Abhorrent and self-loathed, to fold my arms Round the rank felon, and for daily bread
To hug contagion to my poisoned breast.
On these wild shores, the saving hand of Grace Will probe my secret soul, and cleanse its wounds, And fit the faithful penitent for heaven.
SEEST thou not, William, that the scorching sun
By this time half his daily race hath run?
The savage thrusts his light canoe to shore,
And hurries homeward with his fishy store.
Suppose we leave awhile this stubborn soil,
To eat our dinner, and to rest from toil.
Agreed. Yon tree, whose purple gum bestows
A ready medicine for the sick man's woes,
Forms with its shadowy boughs a cool retreat
To shield us from the noontide's sultry heat.
Ah, Humphrey! now, upon Old England's shore,
The weary laborer's morning work is o'er.
The woodman there rests from his measured stroke,
Flings down his axe, and sits beneath the oak;
Savored with hunger, there he eats his food,
There drinks the cooling streamlet of the wood.
To us no cooling streamlet winds its way;
No joys domestic crown for us the day:
The felon's name, the outcast's garb, we wear,
Toil all the day, and all the night despair.
Ay, William! laboring up the furrowed ground,
I used to love the village clock's old sound,
Rejoice to hear my morning toil was done,
And trudge it homeward when the clock went one.
"Twas ere I turned a soldier and a sinner.
Pshaw! curse this whining! let us fall to dinner.
I, too, have loved this hour, nor yet forgot
The household comforts of my little cot;
For at this hour my wife, with watchful care,
Was wont her humble dainties to prepare.
The keenest sauce by hunger was supplied;
And my poor children prattled at my side.
Methinks I see the old oak table spread,
The clean white trencher, and the good brown bread;
The cheese, my daily fare, which Mary made,
For Mary knew full well the housewife's trade;
cider I could make;
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