Yet further.—Many, I believe,
there are
Who live a life of virtuous decency,
135
Men who can hear the Decalogue and feel
No self-reproach; who of the moral law
Established in the land where they abide
Are strict observers; and not negligent
In acts of love to those with whom they
dwell, [17] 140
Their kindred, and the children of their
blood.
Praise be to such, and to their slumbers
peace!
—But of the poor man ask, the abject
poor;
Go, and demand of him, if there be here
In this cold abstinence from evil deeds,
145
And these inevitable charities,
Wherewith to satisfy the human soul?
No—man is dear to man; the
poorest poor
Long for some moments in a weary life
When they can know and feel that they
have been, 150
Themselves, the fathers and the dealers-out
Of some small blessings; have been kind
to such
As needed kindness, for this single cause,
That we have all of us one human heart.
—Such pleasure is to one kind Being
known, 155
My neighbour, when with punctual care,
each week
Duly as Friday comes, though pressed herself
By her own wants, she from her store [18]
of meal
Takes one unsparing handful for the scrip
Of this old Mendicant, and, from her door
160
Returning with exhilarated heart,
Sits by her fire, and builds her hope
in heaven.
Then let him pass, a blessing on his head!
And while in that vast solitude to which
The tide of things has borne [19] him,
he appears 165
To breathe and live but for himself alone,
Unblamed, uninjured, let him bear about
The good which the benignant law of Heaven
Has hung around him: and, while life
is his,
Still let him prompt the unlettered villagers
170
To tender offices and pensive thoughts.
[D]
—Then let him pass, a blessing on
his head!
And, long as he can wander, let him breathe
The freshness of the valleys; let his
blood
Struggle with frosty air and winter snows;
175
And let the chartered wind that sweeps
the heath
Beat his grey locks against his withered
face.
Reverence the hope whose vital anxiousness
Gives the last human interest to his heart.
May never HOUSE, misnamed of INDUSTRY,
180
Make him a captive!—for that
pent-up din,
Those life-consuming sounds that clog
the air,
Be his the natural silence of old age!
Let him be free of mountain solitudes;
And have around him, whether heard or
not, 185
The pleasant melody of woodland birds.
Few are his pleasures: if his eyes
have now
Been doomed so long to settle upon earth
That not without some effort they behold