_A week this night_, _I’m in my grave_: _Orion walketh o’er the wave_: _Down in the dark damp earth I lie_, _While he doth march in majesty_. _A few weeks hence and spring will come_; _The earth will bright array put on_ _Of daisy and of primrose bright_, _And everything which loves the light_. _And some one to my child will say_, “_You’ll soon forget that you could play_ _Beethoven_; _let us hear a strain_ _From that slow movement once again_.” _And so she’ll play that melody_, _While I among the worms do lie_; _Dead to them all_, _for ever dead_; _The churchyard clay dense overhead_. _I once did think there might be mine_ _One friendship perfect and divine_; _Alas_! _that dream dissolved in tears_ _Before I’d counted twenty years_. _For I was ever commonplace_; _Of genius never had a trace_; _My thoughts the world have never fed_, _Mere echoes of the book last read_. _Those whom I knew I cannot blame_: _If they are cold_, _I am the same_: _How could they ever show to me_ _More than a common courtesy_? _There is no deed which I have done_; _There is no love which I have won_, _To make them for a moment grieve_ _That I this night their earth must leave_. Thus, moaning at the break of day, A man upon his deathbed lay; A moment more and all was still; The Morning Star came o’er the hill. But when the dawn lay on his face, It kindled an immortal grace; As if in death that Life were shown Which lives not in the great alone. Orion sank down in the west Just as he sank into his rest; I closed in solitude his eyes, And watched him till the sun’s uprise. CHAPTER I CHILDHOOD NOW that I have completed my autobiography up to the present year, I sometimes doubt whether it is right to publish it. Of what use is it, many persons will say, to present to the world what is mainly a record of weaknesses and failures? If I had any triumphs to tell; if I could show how I had risen superior to poverty and suffering; if, in short, I were a hero of any kind whatever, I might perhaps be justified in communicating my success to mankind, and stimulating them to do as I have done. But mine is the tale of a commonplace life, perplexed by many problems I have never solved; disturbed by many difficulties I have never surmounted; and blotted by ignoble concessions which are a constant regret. I have decided, however, to let the manuscript remain. I will not destroy it, although I will not take the responsibility of printing it. Somebody may think it worth preserving; and there are two reasons why they may think so, if there are no others. In the first place it has some little historic value, for I feel increasingly that the race to which I belonged is fast passing away, and that the Dissenting minister of the present day is a different being altogether from the Dissenting minister of forty years ago.