“Well! let the parish give its paupers aid; 360 You must the vileness of his acts allow.”-- “And you, dear lady, that he feels it now.”-- “When such dissemblers on their deeds reflect, Can they the pity they refused expect? He that doth evil, evil shall he dread.”-- } “The snow,” quoth Susan, “falls upon his bed-- } It blows beside the thatch--it melts upon his head.”-- } “’Tis weakness, child, for grieving guilt to feel.”-- “Yes, but he never sees a wholesome meal; Through his bare dress appears his shrivell’d skin, 370 And ill he fares without, and worse within; With that weak body, lame, diseased, and slow, What cold, pain, peril, must the sufferer know!”-- “Think on his crime.”--“Yes, sure ’twas very wrong; But look, (God bless him!) how he gropes along.”-- “Brought me to shame.”--“Oh! yes, I know it all-- } What cutting blast! and he can scarcely crawl; } He freezes as he moves--he dies! if he should fall. } With cruel fierceness drives this icy sleet-- And must a Christian perish in the street, 380 In sight of Christians?--There! at last, he lies; Nor unsupported can he ever rise: He cannot live.”--“But is he fit to die?”-- Here Susan softly mutter’d a reply, Look’d round the room--said something of its state, Dives the rich, and Lazarus at his gate; And then, aloud--“In pity do behold The man affrighten’d, weeping, trembling, cold. Oh! how those flakes of snow their entrance win Through the poor rags, and keep the frost within; 390 His very heart seems frozen as he goes, Leading that starved companion of his woes: He tried to pray--his lips, I saw them move, And he so turn’d his piteous looks above; But the fierce wind the willing heart opposed, And, ere he spoke, the lips in misery closed. Poor suffering object! yes, for ease you pray’d, And God will hear--he only, I’m afraid.”-- “Peace! Susan, peace! Pain ever follows sin.”-- “Ah! then,” thought Susan, “when will ours begin? 400 When reach’d his home, to what a cheerless fire And chilling bed will those cold limbs retire! Yet ragged, wretched as it is, that bed Takes half the space of his contracted shed; I saw the thorns beside the narrow grate, With straw collected in a putrid state. There will he, kneeling, strive the fire to raise, And that will warm him, rather than the blaze; The sullen, smoky blaze, that cannot last One moment after his attempt is past: 410 And I so warmly and so purely laid, To sink to rest--indeed, I am afraid.”-- “Know you his conduct?”--“Yes, indeed, I know-- And how he wanders in the wind and snow: Safe in our rooms the threat’ning storm we hear, But he feels strongly what we faintly fear.”--