Page:Hermit of Powis.pdf/8

 Lord Leslie fled away from his home,

And none knew whither he went;

His lands fell in to his next of kin,

And his gold by his lady was spent.

But when years had sped, and his lady was dead,

And his name forgotten ’mongst men,

A Hermit appeared in Powis’s grounds,

And made him a sort of a den.

He prayed, and starved, and scourged himself,

Till his lean frame leaner grew,

But at last the curtain dropt on the sccnescene [sic],

And then the truth we knew.

For a scroll was found hy the side of the corpse,

And these were the words it bore:

"This is the clay of Leslie the Earl,

Who sinned and suffered so sore."

I’ve told this tale of the days of old

In a simple, homely strain,

But if it create one thought like this,

It has not been told in vain:

An honest, truthful, rightful course

Is the best for death or time,

For present anguish and future woe

Are the offspring of vice and crime.