James and Mary Ford, eds. Every Day in the Year. 1902.
August 25On the Death of Chatterton
By Samuel Taylor Coleridge (17721834)
W
Seeing how gladly we all sink to sleep,
Babes, Children, Youths, and Men,
Night following night for threescore years and ten!
But doubly strange, when life is but a breath
To sigh and pant with, up Want’s rugged steep.
Reserve thy terrors and thy stings display
For coward Wealth and Guilt in robes of State!
Lo! by the grave I stand of one, for whom
A prodigal Nature and a niggard Doom
(That all bestowing, this withholding all,)
Made each chance knell from distant spire or dome
Sound like a seeking Mother’s anxious call,
Return, poor Child! Home, weary Truant, home!
From want, and the bleak freezings of neglect.
Too long before the vexing Storm-blast driven
Here hast thou found repose! beneath this sod!
Thou! O vain word! thou dwell’st not with the clod!
Amid the shining host of the Forgiven
Thou at the throne of Mercy and thy God
The triumph of redeeming Love dost hymn
(Believe it, O my soul!) to harps of Seraphim.