CONTENTS.
POEMS.
THE EMIGRANTS.
... The sire has told
The heart-struck group of dark disaster nigh:
Their old paternal home must now be sold,
And that last relic of ancestry
Resigned to strangers. Long and strenuously
He strove to stem the flood’s o’erwhelming mass;
But still some fresh unseen calamity
Burst like a foaming billow—till, alas!
No hope remains that this their sorest grief may pass.
“Yet be not thus dismayed. Our altered lot
He that ordains will brace us to endure.
This changeful world affords no sheltered spot,
Where man may count his frail possessions sure:
Our better birthright, noble, precious, pure,
May well console for earthly treasures marred,—
Treasures, alas! how vain and insecure,
Where none from rust and robbery can guard:
The wise man looks to heaven alone for his reward.”
The Christian father thus. But whither now
Shall the bewildered band their course direct?
What home shall shield that matron’s honoured brow,
And those dear pensive maids from wrong protect?
Or cheer them ’mid the world’s unkind neglect?
That world to the unfortunate so cold,
While lavish of its smiles and fair respect
Unto the proud, the prosperous, the bold;
Still shunning want and woe; still courting pomp and gold.
Shall they adopt the poor retainer’s trade,
And sue for pity from the great and proud?
No! never shall ungenerous souls upbraid
Their conduct in adversity—which bowed
But not debased them. Or, amidst the crowd,
In noisome towns shall they themselves immure,
Their wounds, their woes, their weary days to shroud
In some mean melancholy nook obscure?
No! worthier tasks await, and brighter scenes allure.
A land of climate fair and fertile soil,
Teeming with milk and wine and waving corn,
Invites from far the venturous Briton’s toil:
And thousands, long by fruitless cares foresworn,
And now across the wide Atlantic borne,
To seek new homes on Afric’s southern strand:
Better to launch with them than sink forlorn,
To vile dependence in our native land;
Better to fall in God’s than man’s unfeeling hand!