preserved her husband from the press-gang, is also true. 

 

Eclogue III ­ The Funeral

 The coffin[14] as I past across the lane Came sudden on my view. It was not here, A sight of every day, as in the streets Of the great city, and we paus’d and ask’d Who to the grave was going. It was one, A village girl, they told us, who had borne An eighteen months strange illness, and had pined With such slow wasting that the hour of death Came welcome to her. We pursued our way To the house of mirth, and with that idle talk That passes o’er the mind and is forgot, We wore away the time. But it was eve When homewardly I went, and in the air Was that cool freshness, that discolouring shade That makes the eye turn inward. Then I heard Over the vale the heavy toll of death Sound slow; it made me think upon the dead, I questioned more and learnt her sorrowful tale. She bore unhusbanded a mother’s name, And he who should have cherished her, far off Sail’d on the seas, self-exil’d from his home, For he was poor. Left thus, a wretched one, Scorn made a mock of her, and evil tongues Were busy with her name. She had one ill Heavier, neglect, forgetfulness from him Whom she had loved so dearly. Once he wrote, But only once that drop of comfort came To mingle with her cup of wretchedness; And when his parents had some tidings from him, There was no mention of poor Hannah there, Or ’twas the cold enquiry, bitterer Than silence. So she pined and pined away And for herself and baby toil’d and toil’d, Nor did she, even on her death bed, rest From labour, knitting with her outstretch’d arms Till she sunk with very weakness. Her old mother Omitted no kind office, and she work’d Hard, and with hardest working barely earn’d Enough to make life struggle and prolong The pains of grief and sickness. Thus she lay On the sick bed of poverty, so worn With her long suffering and that painful thought That at her heart lay rankling, and so weak, That she could make no effort to express Affection for her infant; and the child, Whose lisping love perhaps had solaced her With a strange infantine ingratitude Shunn’d her as one indifferent. She was past That anguish, for she felt her hour draw on, And ’twas her only comfoft now to think Upon the grave. “Poor girl!” her mother said, “Thou hast suffered much!” “aye mother! there is none “Can tell what I have suffered!” she replied, “But I shall soon be where the weary rest.” And she did rest her soon, for it pleased God To take her to his mercy. 

  [14] It is proper to remark that the story related in this Eclogue is strictly true. I met the funeral, 

 Prev. P 44/51 next