His infancy wanted not guilt; his life was continued evil: He drew in pride with his mother's milk, and a father's lips taught him cursing. I marked him as the wayward boy; I traced the dissolute youth: I saw him betray the innocent, and sacrifice affection to his lust; I saw him the companion of knaves, and a squanderer of ill-got gain; I heard him curse his own misery, while he hugged the chains that galled him: For well had experience declared the bitterness of guilty pleasure, But habit, with its iron net, involved him in its folds. Behind him lowered the thunder-storm, which the caldron of his wickedness had brewed; Before him was the smooth steep cliff, whose base is ruin and despair. So he rushed madly on, and tried to forget his being: The noisy revel and the low debauch, and fierce excitement of play, With dreary interchange of palling pleasures, filled the dull round of existence: Memory was to him as a foe, so he flew for false solace to the wine-cup, And stunned his enemy at even; but she rent him as a giant in the morning. I turned aside to weep; I lost him a little while: I looked, and years had past; he was hoar with the winter of his age. And what was now his hope? where was the balm for his sadness? The memory of the past was guilt: the feeling of the present, remorse. Then he set his affections on gold, he worshipped the shrine of Mammon, And to lay richer gifts before his idol, he starved his own bowels; So, the youth spent in profligacy ended in the gripings of want: The miser grudged himself husks to take deeper vengeance of the prodigal. And I said, this is Sorrow, but pity cannot reach it; This is to be wretched indeed, to be guilty without repentance. [Illustration: Of Joy] OF JOY.