Page:Moral Pieces in Prose and Verse.pdf/264

 Or mourning frailty seek repose at last, Or here remorseful agony might weep, Or stern misanthropy her vigils keep, Or in these midnight cells might murder wait, To lure the thoughtless traveller to his fate, Or men like fiends, forever lost to shame, Might perpetrate such deeds as have no name.

Yet in the centre of this fearful wood, High on a cliff a rustic cabin stood; It seem'd not like the secret haunt of guilt, Where groans of anguish rise, and blood is spilt, But such as pining want would not refuse, And what unshelter'd poverty might choose.

Forth from its humble door unheeded goes, A man of many years, and many woes; His eye was on the earth, his step was meek, The mountain winds blew coldly on his cheek, And on his mantle thin their vengeance seem'd to wreak. He brighter paths, and better days, had seen, And high in honour's envied list had been; Yet for no deed of wrong, no hateful crime, Pass'd he in solitude his exil'd time: Ah no! if doubts like these within thee rise, Muse on his brow, and then those doubts despise. A mild and manly dignity is there, Tho' mark'd with age, and furrow'd o'er with care, Yet not obscur'd by shame, or darken'd by despair;