Page:Poems - Southey (1799) volume 2.djvu/217

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An eighteen months strange illness, and had pinedWith such slow wasting that the hour of deathCame welcome to her. We pursued our wayTo the house of mirth, and with that idle talkThat passes o'er the mind and is forgot,We wore away the time. But it was eveWhen homewardly I went, and in the airWas that cool freshness, that discolouring shadeThat makes the eye turn inward. Then I heardOver the vale the heavy toll of deathSound slow; it made me think upon the dead,I questioned more and learnt her sorrowful tale.She bore unhusbanded a mother's name,And he who should have cherished her, far offSail'd on the seas, self-exil'd from his home,For he was poor. Left thus, a wretched one,Scorn made a mock of her, and evil tonguesWere busy with her name. She had one illHeavier, neglect, forgetfulness from himWhom she had loved so dearly. Once he wrote,
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