A CASE WHERE MERCY SHOULD HAVE MITIGATED JUSTICE.
FROM THE SAME.
Unnumbered objects ask thy honest care,
Beside the orphan's tear, the widow's prayer:
Far as thy power can save, thy bounty bless,
Unnumbered evils call for thy redress.
Seest thou afar yon solitary thorn,
Whose aged limbs the heath's wild winds have torn?
While yet to cheer the homeward shepherd's eye,
A few seem straggling in the evening sky!
Not many suns have hastened down the day,
Or blushing moons immersed in clouds their way,
Since there, a scene that stained their sacred light,
With horror stopped a felon in his flight;
A babe just born that signs of life expressed,
Lay naked o'er the mother's lifeless breast.
The pitying robber, conscious that, pursued,
He had no time to waste, yet stood and viewed;
To the next cot the trembling infant bore,
And gave a part of what he stole before;
Nor known to him the wretches were, nor dear,
He felt as man, and dropped a human tear.
Far other treatment she who breathless lay,
Found from a viler animal of prey.
Worn with long toil on many a painful road,
That toil increased by nature's growing load,
When evening brought the friendly hour of rest,
And all the mother thronged about her breast,
The ruffian officer opposed her stay,
And, cruel, bore her in her pangs away,
So far beyond the town's last limits drove,
That to return were hopeless, had she strove;
Abandoned there, with famine, pain, and cold,
And anguish, she expired,—The rest I've told.
'Now let me swear. For by my soul's last sigh,
That thief shall live, that overseer shall die.'
Too late!—his life the generous robber paid,
Lost by that pity which his steps delayed!
No soul-discerning Mansfield sat to hear,
No Hertford bore his prayer to mercy's ear;
No liberal justice first assigned the gaol,
Or urged, as Camplin would have urged, his tale.