Page:Poetical pieces on various subjects.pdf/14



Now shrinks my soul, I hear a doleful moan,

Enough to melt an heart tho' hard as stone:

The sound proceedeth from a mansion nigh,

The Master thereof is about to die

I view him on affliction's bed confin'd,

Pain'd in his body, troubled in his mind,

Sad sight indeed! for human eyes to see,

He seems in torments tho' on earth he be

Extreme his grief! deplorable his stale!

Much he repines and murmurs against fate;

Can common ills, or any bod'ly pain,

Ere make a living man thus to complain.

Ah! surely no, it is the gall within,

The bitter effect of a life of sin,

Which makes him now to cry when death does stare

In all the ravings of a wild despair