| Andrew Macphail, comp. The Book of Sorrow. 1916. | | | X. The Pity of It
Hester | | By Charles Lamb (1775–1834) |
| | | WHEN maidens such as Hester die, | |
| Their place ye may not well supply, | |
| Though ye among a thousand try, | |
| With vain endeavour. | |
| |
| A month or more hath she been dead, | 5 |
| Yet cannot I by force be led | |
| To think upon the wormy bed | |
| And her together. | |
| |
| A springy motion in her gait, | |
| A rising step, did indicate | 10 |
| Of pride and joy no common rate, | |
| That flush’d her spirit. | |
| |
| I know not by what name beside | |
| I shall it call: if ’twas not pride, | |
| It was a joy to that allied, | 15 |
| She did inherit. | |
| |
| Her parents held the Quaker rule, | |
| Which doth the human feeling cool, | |
| But she was train’d in Nature’s school, | |
| Nature had blest her. | 20 |
| |
| A waking eye, a prying mind, | |
| A heart that stirs, is hard to bind, | |
| A hawk’s keen sight ye cannot blind, | |
| Ye could not Hester. | |
| |
| My sprightly neighbour, gone before | 25 |
| To that unknown and silent shore, | |
| Shall we not meet, as heretofore, | |
| Some summer morning, | |
| |
| When from thy cheerful eyes a ray | |
| Hath struck a bliss upon the day, | 30 |
| A bliss that would not go away, | |
| A sweet fore-warning? | | | | |
|
|
