Classic Poem

The Old Man is dead! — Toll heavily ye bells!
The Son, the heir is coming, hark! — the music how it swells!
That roar and shock of merriment strikes sadly on the heart:
Joy is here, almost ere Death has yet had leisure to depart:
And the last of that dark funeral (the holy rite scarce done,)
Cries out — " The Father's buried, friends: Long life unto the Son! "

From out the miser mansion is swept the black array:
The windows are unbarred, and straight in dances merry Day;
The cold grim hearth is blazing; the cellars shed their wine;
The chests give up their hoarded souls, and the Rake saith — " All is mine; "
Yet the first debt thaThe pays is with an oath, — for virtue won,
(And lost, alas!) — and so begin the triumphs of the Son.

The Rake dawns forth in scarlet: his ears are deaf with praise;
The fencer and the fiddler, and the jockey court his gaze:
The poet mouths his stanzas; the bully, with a curse,
Swears how he'll cut a throat for him, and only asks — his purse.
O, Steward of the needy, be careful of thy prize;
Above thee beams the firmament: Thy way is to the skies:

No, no: his doom is earthly; coarse, earthly are his joys,
Black wine, and wild-eyed women round him stun the night with noise;
And one, a painted Thais, doth fire a painted world;
And others round the dizzy room in drunken dance are whirled:
Foul songs are met by fouler jibes; mad screams by curses bold;
Till even the drowsy watchman wakes, and — claims his bribe in gold.

But pleasures are not endless, however far we range
And summer friendship faileth, and golden seasons change:
And then the fierce-eyed creditor comes clamouring for his debt;
And all who fed upon the Rake are eager to forget.
The bailiffs are upon him, — ah! he 's saved: A gentle heart
Redeems him: — 'tis a Magdalen who plays an angel's part.

For once the rescue serveth: But blacker days may be;
And how to live he ponders, and still riot with the free:
He sells his youth, his manhood: takes sour Old Age to wife,
And thus (for a nauseous respite) twists a serpent round his life:
That sting will drive him frantic — ay! the dice are in his hands;
And the terrible eye of Morning sees him beggared where he stands.

What followeth in the story? Why, horror and the jail;
Where food is not, and fire is not, and every friend doth fail;
Where each jailer is a robber, and each prisoner 'round a foe;
Where nothing linketh heart to heart, — not even the common woe.
One hope he had: — 'tis vanished! He sits down with vacant stare,
And the game of Life abandons, with the quiet of despair: — —

And then — The M ADHOUSE opens! Look round; — he cannot: Blight
And frenzy hang about his brain, and blind his staring sight:
In vain pope, king, sit crowned; in vain the martyr raves;
In vain the herds of idiots sit chattering o'er their graves:
He heareth not; he seeth not: all sense is dimmed by pain:
Ambition, Pride, Religion, Fear, scream out to him in vain.

And yet, — Oh, human Virtue! — Thou never canst escape:
Thou comesThere, as everywhere, in woman's angel shape:
The loved — the lost — the ruined One — She leaves him not at last;
But soothes and serves about him, till the damps of death are past:
His limbs she then composes, — weeps, — prays, — (they heed her not;)
Then glides away in silence, — like a benefit forgot!