'When present sorrows every thought employ, Our father's woes may take the garb of joy, And, knowing what our sires have undergone, Ourselves can smile, though weary, wandering on. For if our youth a thunder-cloud o'ershadows, Changing to barren swamps Life's flowering meadows, We know that fiery flash and bursting peal Others, like us, were forced to hear and feel; And while they moulder in a quiet grave, Robbed of all havings--worthless all they have-- We still, with face erect, behold the sun-- Have bright examples in what has been done By head or hand--and, in the times to come, May tread bright pathways to our gate of doom. 'So, if we gaze from our snug villa's door, By vines or honeysuckles covered o'er, Though we have saddening thoughts, we still can smile In thinking our hut supersedes the pile Whose turrets totter 'mid the woods before us, And whose proud owners used to trample o'er us; All now by weeds and ivy overgrown, And touched by Time, that hurls down stone from stone. We gaze with scorn on what is worn away, And never dream about our own decay. Thus, while this May-day cheers each flower and tree, Enlivening earth and almost cheering me, I half forget the mouldering moats of Leigh. 'Wide Lancashire has changed its babyhood, As Time makes saplings spring to timber wood; But as grown men their childhood still remember, And think of Summer in their dark December, So Manchester and Liverpool may wonder, And bow to old halls over which they ponder, Unknowing that man's spirit yearns to all Which--once lost--prayers can never more recall. The storied piles of mortar, brick, and stone, Where trade bids noise and gain to struggle on, Competing for the prize that Mammon gives-- Youth killed by toil and profits bought with lives-- Will not prevent the quiet, thinking mind From looking back to years when Summer wind Sang, not o'er mills, but round ancestral halls, And, 'stead of engine's steam, gave dews from waterfalls. 'He who by brick-built houses closely pent, That show nought beautiful to sight or scent, Pines for green fields, will cherish in his room Some pining plant bereft of natural bloom; And, like the crowds which yonder factories hold, Withering 'mid warmth, and in their spring-tide old, So Lancashire may fondly look upon Her wrecks fast vanishing of ages gone, And while encroaching railroad, street, and mill On every side the smoky prospect fill, She yet may smile to see some tottering wall Bring old times back, like ancient Morley Hall. But towers that Leland saw in times of yore Are now, like Leland's works, almost no more-- The antiquarian's pages, cobweb-bound, The antique mansion, levelled with the ground.