Page:Poems of Nature and Life.djvu/304

 294 CONSOLATIONS OF SOLITUDE

The shot that felled some creature to the ground,

That choked yon harmless thrush's music sweet,

And laid the songster lifeless at our feet.

Thou askest by what right we do such wrong,

Shattering God's beauteous instrument of song ;

And, when mischance with some unwonted pain

The wanton sport revenges not in vain.

Then these small wrongs will breed such melancholy

As health had laughed at for an idle folly.

All will come back ; each creature's dying moan

Will haunt us with a sad, reproachful tone.

Things that seemed little in our eyes

Will swell in thought to monstrous size ;

And faults for which we felt ashamed to care

Will, in the hour of anguish, breed despair.

O pitiless one, that wouldst be sighing

In the dull ears of sick and dying,

Ever vexing most the breast

That hath greatest need of rest !

Wilt not thou, too, die at last.

When the din of life is past ?

Or, in the gloomy shades below,

Wilt thou forever to and fro

Pursue the viewless, voiceless band

That ghastly roams the Stygian strand .-•

Alas for man's poor, persecuted race,

If it shall ne'er escape thy tireless chase !

Might we but feel thy blows, thy countenance see,

'Twere comfort, even though vain from thee to flee ;

But dreadful is the thought of unseen enemy.

Art thou, then, foe

To all men ? No ! To them that are born blind, Stern one, thou canst be kind,

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