whom lawful violence[10] had forced From his own home and wife and little ones, Who by his labour lived; that he was one Whose uncorrupted heart could keenly feel A husband’s love, a father’s anxiousness, That from the wages of his toil he fed The distant dear ones, and would talk of them At midnight when he trod the silent deck With him he valued, talk of them, of joys That he had known—oh God! and of the hour When they should meet again, till his full heart His manly heart at last would overflow Even like a child’s with very tenderness. Peace to his honest spirit! suddenly It came, and merciful the ball of death, For it came suddenly and shattered him, And left no moment’s agonizing thought On those he loved so well. He ocean deep Now lies at rest. Be Thou her comforter Who art the widow’s friend! Man does not know What a cold sickness made her blood run back When first she heard the tidings of the fight; Man does not know with what a dreadful hope She listened to the names of those who died, Man does not know, or knowing will not heed, With what an agony of tenderness She gazed upon her children, and beheld His image who was gone. Oh God! be thou Her comforter who art the widow’s friend! 

  [10] The person alluded to was pressed into the service 

 

Henry the Hermit

 It was a little island where he dwelt, Or rather a lone rock, barren and bleak, Short scanty herbage spotting with dark spots Its gray stone surface. Never mariner Approach’d that rude and uninviting coast, Nor ever fisherman his lonely bark Anchored beside its shore. It was a place Befitting well a rigid anchoret, Dead to the hopes, and vanities, and joys And purposes of life; and he had dwelt Many long years upon that lonely isle, For in ripe manhood he abandoned arms, Honours and friends and country and the world, And had grown old in solitude. That isle Some solitary man in other times Had made his dwelling-place; and Henry found The little chapel that his toil had built Now by the storms unroofed, his bed of leaves Wind-scattered, and his grave o’ergrown with grass, And thistles, whose white seeds winged in vain Withered on rocks, or in the waves were lost. So he repaired the chapel’s ruined roof, Clear’d the grey lichens from the altar-stone, And underneath a rock that shelter’d him From the sea blasts, he built his hermitage. The peasants from the shore would bring him food And beg his prayers; but human converse else He knew not in that utter solitude, Nor ever visited the haunts of men Save when some sinful wretch on a sick bed Implored his blessing and his aid in death. That summons he delayed not 

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