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. 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 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, A bliss that would not go away, A sweet forewarning? [Illustration] [Illustration: HELEN] XXVI High-born Helen, round your dwelling These twenty years I’ve paced in vain; Haughty beauty, thy lover’s duty Hath been to glory in his pain. High-born Helen, proudly telling Stories of thy cold disdain; I starve, I die, now you comply, And I no longer can complain. These twenty years I’ve lived on tears, Dwelling for ever on a frown; On sighs I’ve fed, your scorn my bread; I perish now you kind are grown. Can I, who loved my beloved, But for the scorn “was in her eye,” Can I be moved for my beloved When she “returns me sigh for sigh?” In stately pride, by my bedside, High-born Helen’s portrait’s hung; Deaf to my praise, my mournful lays Are nightly to the portrait sung. [Illustration] To that I weep, nor ever sleep, Complaining all night long to her: _Helen, grown old, no longer cold, Said_, “You to all men I prefer.” [Illustration] [Illustration: THE BEGGAR MAN] XXVII Abject, stooping, old, and wan, See yon wretched beggar man; Once a father’s hopeful heir, Once a mother’s tender care. When too young to understand, He but scorch’d his little hand By the candle’s flaming light Attracted, dancing, spiral, bright; Clasping fond her darling round, A thousand kisses heal’d the wound: Now, abject, stooping, old, and wan, No mother tends the beggar man. [Illustration: THE BEGGAR MAN] [Illustration] Then nought too good for him to wear, With cherub face and flaxen hair, In fancy’s choicest gauds array’d, Cap of lace with rose to aid; Milk-white hat and feather blue; Shoes of red; and coral too; With silver bells to please his ear, And charm the frequent ready tear. Now, abject, stooping, old, and wan, Neglected is the beggar man.