Classic Poem

AN INCIDENT FOUNDED ON FACT

Poor Monsieur D'Alveron! I well remember
The day I visited his ruinous cot,
And heard the story of his fallen fortunes.
It was a fine May morning, and the flowers
Spread their fair faces to the laughing sun,
And look'd like small terrestrial stars, that beam'd
With life and joy; the merry lark was high
Careering in the heavens, and now and then
A throstle from the neighbouring thicket poured
His musical and hearty orisons.
The cot too truly told that poverty
Found it a home with misery and scorn:
No clambering jessamine, no well-trained roses
There lingered, like sweet charity, to hide
The rents unseemly of the plaster'd wall:
No tight trimm'd rows of box, or daisy prim,
Mark'd a clean pathway through the miry clay,
But all around was want and cold neglect.
With curious hand (and heart that beat with warm
Benevolence) — I knock'd, lifted the latch,
And in the language of his mother-land
Besought a welcome: quick with courteous phrase,
And joy unfeign'd to hear his native tongue,
He bade me enter — 'T was ruined hovel;
Disease and penury had done their worst
To load a wretched exile with despair,
But still, with spirit unbroken, he lived on,
And, with a Frenchman's national levity,
Bounded elastic from his weight of woes.
I listed long his fond garrulity,
For sympathy and confidence are aye
Each other's echoes, and I won his heart
By pitying his sorrows; long he told
Of friends, and wife, and darling little ones,
Fortunes, and titles, and long-cherished hopes,
By phrensied Revolution marr'd and crush'd:
But oft my patience flicker'd, and my eye
Wander'd inquisitive round the murky room,
To see wherein I best might mitigate
The misery my bosom bled to view.
I sat upon his crazy couch, and there
With many sordid rags, a roebuck's skin
Show'd sleek and mottled; swift the clear gray eye
Of the poor sufferer had mark'd my wonder,
And as in simple guise this touching tale
He told me, in the tongue his youth had loved,
Many a tear stole down his wrinkled cheek.

" Yon glossy skin is all that now remains
To tell me that the past is not a dream!
Oft up my château's avenue of limes,
To be caress'd in mine ancestral hall,
Poor Louis bounded (I had called him Louis,
Because I loved my king); — my little ones
Have on his forked antlers often hung
Their garlands of spring flowers, and fed him with
Sweet heads of clover from their tiny hands.
But on a sorrowful day a random-shot
Of some bold thief, or well-skill'd forester,
Struck him to death, and many a tear and sob
Were the unwritten epitaph upon him.
The children would not lose him utterly,
But pray'd to have his mottled beautiful skin
A rug to their new pony-chaise, that they
Might oftener think of their lost favourite.
Ay — there it is! — that precious treasury
Of fond remembrances — that glossy skin!
O, thou chief solace in the wintry nights
That warms my poor old heart, and thaws my breast
With tears of — Mais , Monsieur , asseyez vous! " —

But I had started up, and turn'd aside
To weep in solitude.