And fill'd each pause the nightingale had made.
But now the sounds of population fail:
No cheerful murmurs fluctuate in the gale,
No busy steps the grass-grown footway tread,
But all the bloomy flush of life is fled;
All but yon widow'd solitary thing,
That feebly bends beside the plashy spring:
She, wretched matron, forced in age, for bread,