Page:Poems By Chauncy Hare Townshend.djvu/80

 0 .TH] WEAVER'S BOY. To deck her person miserably gay, He squauder'd all the earnings of the day: See, o'er the bowl in noisy mirth they sit, With laugh and song, and wild indecent wit: Then turn to yonder dwelling, pierce the gloom Of yon dark, silent, melancholy, room, Where, all alone, the more than widow'd wife Ponders her sad vicissitude of life, Ail, ever and anon advancing nigher, Hangs o'er the remnants of her wretched fire; I'is but mechanical: the mind will steel The frame against the worst, that it can feel. She thinks not of the cold; it can impart No pang to her, whose chill is of the heart. Yet she complain'd not; 'twas her eye alone, Her alter'd cheek, her voice's fait'ring tone, Which told she knew the miserable lot He car'd but little, if she knew or not. She soon will be a mother; all her hope Hangs on that hour, and bids with sorrow cope: "How oft, in happier days, he has exprest This one fond wish, the cherish'd of his breast, His Mary's image in her babe to see; He will not, cannot, coldly turn from me !',m The houris come. "MyWilham, O what joy, Our infant lives, and is a lovely boy ! ......... Google

�