OF SORROW.
I said, I will seek out Sorrow, and minister the balm of pity;
So I sought her in the house of mourning; but peace followed in her train.
Then I marked her brooding silently in the gloomy cavern of Regret;
But a sunbeam of heavenly hope gleamed on her folded wing.
So I turned to the cabin of the poor, where famine dwelt with disease:
But the bed of the sick was smoothed, and the ploughman whistled at his labour.
So I stopt, and mused within myself, to remember where Sorrow dwelt,
For I sought to see her alone, uncomforted, uncompanioned.
I went to the prison, but penitence was there, and promise of better times;
I listened at the madman's cell, but it echoed with deluded laughter.
Then I turned me to the rich and noble; I noted the sons of fashion:
A smile was on the languid cheek, that had no commerce with the heart;
Unhallowed thoughts, like fires, gleamed from the window of the eye;
And sorrow lived with those whose pleasures add unto their sins.
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.
