Knew all their duties and discharged them well;
The lazy vagrants in her presence shook,
And pregnant damsels fear’d her stern rebuke;
She look’d on want with judgment clear and cool,
And felt with reason and bestow’d by rule;
She match’d both sons and daughters to her mind,
And lent them eyes, for Love, she heard, was blind;
Yet ceaseless still she throve, alert, alive,
The working bee, in full or empty hive;
Busy and careful, like that working bee,
No time for love nor tender cares had she;
But when our farmers made their amorous vows,
She talk’d of market-steeds and patent-ploughs. 
Not unemploy’d her evenings pass’d away,
Amusement closed, as business waked the day;
When to her toilet’s brief concern she ran,
And conversation with her friends began,
Who all were welcome, what they saw, to share;
And joyous neighbours praised her Christmas fare,
That none around might, in their scorn, complain
Of Gossip Goe as greedy in her gain. 
   Thus long she reign’d, admired, if not approved;
Praised, if not honour’d; fear’d, if not beloved; —
When, as the busy days of Spring drew near,
That call’d for all the forecast of the year;
When lively hope the rising crops surveyed,
And April promised what September paid;
When stray’d her lambs where gorse and greenwood grow;
When rose her grass in richer vales below;
When pleased she look’d on all the smiling land,
And view’d the hinds, who wrought at her command;
(Poultry in groups still follow’d where she went;)
Then dread o’ercame her,—­that her days were spent. 
   “Bless me!  I die, and not a warning giv’n, —
With much to do on Earth, and all for Heav’n? —
No reparation for my soul’s affairs,
No leave petition’d for the barn’s repairs;
Accounts perplex’d, my interest yet unpaid,
My mind unsettled, and my will unmade; —
A lawyer haste, and in your way, a priest;
And let me die in one good work at least.” 
She spake, and, trembling, dropp’d upon her knees,
Heaven in her eye and in her hand her keys;
And still the more she found her life decay,
With greater force she grasp’d those signs of sway: 
Then fell and died!—­In haste her sons drew near,
And dropp’d, in haste, the tributary tear;
Then from th’ adhering clasp the keys unbound,
And consolation for their sorrows found. 
   Death has his infant-train; his bony arm
Strikes from the baby-cheek the rosy charm;
The brightest eye his glazing film makes dim,
And his cold touch sets fast the lithest limb: 
He seized the sick’ning boy to Gerard lent,
When three days’ life, in feeble cries, were spent;
In pain brought forth, those painful hours to stay,
To breathe in pain and sigh its soul away! 
   “But why thus lent, if thus recall’d again,
To cause and feel, to live and die in pain?”
Or rather say, Why grevious these appear,