THE SAVOYARD.
By E.B. Impey, Esq.
[The following ballad is founded on the melancholy fact of a Savoyard boy and his monkey having been found starved to death in St. James's Park during the night of a severe frost.]
Weary and wan from door to door
With faint and faltering tread,
In vain for shelter I implore,
And pine for want of bread.
Poor Jacko! thou art hungry too;
Thy dim and haggard eye
Pleads more pathetically true,
Than prayer or piercing cry.
Poor mute companion of my toil,
My wanderings and my woes!
Far have we sought this vaunted soil,
And here our course must close.
Chill falls the sleet; our colder clay
Shall to the morning light,
Stretch'd on these icy walks, betray
The ravages of night.
Scarce have I number'd twice seven years;
Ah! who would covet more?
Or swell the lengthen'd stream of tears
To man's thrice measur'd score?
Alas! they told me 'twas a land
Of wealth and weal to all;
And bless'd alike with bounteous hand
The stranger and the thrall.
A land whose golden vallies shame
Thy craggy wilds, Savoy,
Might well, methought, from want reclaim
One poor unfriended boy.
How did my young heart fondly yearn
To greet thy treach'rous shore!
And deem'd the while, for home-return
To husband up a store.
Why did I leave my native glen
And tune my mountain-lay,
To colder maids and sterner men
Than o'er our glaciers stray?
There pity dews the manly cheek
And heaves the bosom coy,
That quail'd not at the giddy peak
Which foils the fleet chamois.
Here—where the torrents voice would thrill
Each craven breast with fear;
For dumb distress or human ill
There drops no kindred tear.
The rushing Arc, the cold blue Rhone,
That in their channels freeze;
And snow-clad Cenis' heart of stone
Might melt ere one of these.
Why did I loathe my lowly cot
Where late I caroll'd free,
Nor felt, contrasted with my lot,
The pomp of high degree?
Lo! where to mock the houseless head
Huge palaces arise,
Whose board uncharitably spread
The unbidden guest denies.
O for the crumbs that reckless fall
From that superfluous board!
O for the warmth you gorgeous hall
And blazing hearth afford!
All unavailing is the prayer—
The proud ones pass us by;
Their chariots roll, their torches glare
Cold on the famish'd eye.
And yet a little from their need
Some poorer hands have spared:
And some have sighed, with little heed,
"Alas! poor Savoyard!"
And some have bent the churlish brow,
And curl'd the lip of scorn;
For they at home had brats enow,
And beggars British-born.
And some have scoff'd as proud to bear
Brute heart in human shape;
Nor drop nor morsel deign'd to share
With alien or with ape.
Poor Jacko! yet one soul can feel
Sad fellowship with thee;
And we have shared our scanty meal
In bitterness or glee.
Yes! we have shared our last—and here
Have little now to crave;
No bounty, save a passing tear,
No gift, beyond a grave.
Still let these arms to thy bare breast
Their lingering heat impart;
Come shroud thee in my tatter'd vest,
And nestle next my heart.
Partners in grief, in want allied,
E'en as we lived, we die;
So let one grave our relics hold,
Entwined, as thus we lie.