All hail, the songsters that awake the morn,
And soothe the soul with wild melodious strains;
All hail, the rocks that Bingley hills adorn,
Beneath whose shades wild nature’s grandeur reigns.
From off yon rock that rears its head so high,
And overlooks the crooked river Aire;
While musing nature’s works full meet thy eye,
The envied game, the lark and timid hare.
In Goitstock falls, and rugged Marley hills,
In Bingley’s grand and quiet sequester’d dale,
Each silvery stream, each dike or rippled rills,
I see thy haunt and read thy “Poacher’s Tale.”
So, Homer like, thy harp was wont to tune,
Thy native vale and glorious days of old,
Whose maidens fair in virtuous beauty shone,
Her sages and her heroes great and bold.
No flattering baseness could employ thy mind,
The free-born muse detests that servile part:
In simple lore thy self-taught lay I find
More grandeur far than all the gloss of art.
Though small regard be paid to worth so rare,
And humble worth unheeded pass along;
Ages to come will sing the “Vale of Aire,”
Her Nicholson and his historic song.
The Pauper’s Box.
Thou odious box, as I look on thee,
I wonder wilt thou be unlocked for me?
No, no! forbear!—yet then, yet then,
’Neath thy grim lid lie the men—
Men whom fortune’s blasted arrows hit,
And send them to the pauper’s pit.
O, dig a grave somewhere for me,
Deep, underneath some wither’d tree;
Or bury me on the wildest heath,
Where Boreas blows his wildest breath,
Or ’mid some wild romantic rocks:
But, oh! forbear the pauper’s box.
Throw me into the ocean deep,
Where many poor forgotten sleep;
Or fling my corpse in the battle mound,
With coffinless thousands ’neath the ground;
I envy not the mightiest dome,
But save me from a pauper’s tomb.