Page:The Emigrants.pdf/54



From sad experience, more than I, to feel For thy desponding spirit, as it sinks Beneath procrastinated fears for those More dear to thee than life! But eminence Of misery is thine, as once of joy; And, as we view the strange vicissitude, We ask anew, where happiness is found?­­­ Alas! in rural life, where youthful dreams See the Arcadia that Romance describes, Not even Content resides!—­In yon low hut Of clay and thatch, where rises the grey smoke Of smold'ring turf, cut from the adjoining moor, The labourer, its inhabitant, who toils From the first dawn of twilight, till the Sun Sinks in the rosy waters of the West, Finds that with poverty it cannot dwell;