Eclogue III. The Funeral.

    The coffin [1] 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.