The Poor Of The Borough. Letter XX: Ellen Orford
'No charms she now can boast,'--'tis true,
But other charmers wither too:
'And she is old,'--the fact I know,
And old will other heroines grow;
But not like them has she been laid,
In ruin'd castle sore dismay'd;
Where naughty man and ghostly spright
Fill'd her pure mind with awe and dread,
Stalk'd round the room, put out the light,
And shook the curtains round her bed.
No cruel uncle kept her land,
No tyrant father forced her hand;
She had no vixen virgin-aunt,
Without whose aid she could not eat,
And yet who poison'd all her meat,
With gibe and sneer and taunt.
Yet of the heroine she'd a share, -
She saved a lover from despair,
And granted all his wish in spite
Of what she knew and felt was right:
But, heroine then no more,
She own'd the fault, and wept and pray'd
And humbly took the parish aid,
And dwelt among the poor.
OBSERVE yon tenement, apart and small,
Where the wet pebbles shine upon the wall;
Where the low benches lean beside the door,
And the red paling bounds the space before;
Where thrift and lavender, and lad's-love bloom, -
That humble dwelling is the widow's home;
There live a pair, for various fortunes known,
But the blind EUen will relate her own; -
Yet ere we hear the story she can tell,
On prouder sorrows let us briefly dwell.
I've often marvell'd, when, by night, by day,
I've mark'd the manners moving in my way,
And heard the language and beheld the lives
Of lass and lover, goddesses and wives,
That books, which promise much of life to give,
Should show so little how we truly live.
To me, it seems, their females and their men
Are but the creatures of the author's pen;
Nay, creatures borrow'd and again convey'd
From book to book--the shadows of a shade:
Life, if they'd search, would show them many a
change;
The ruin sudden, and the misery strange!
With more of grievous, base, and dreadful things,
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poem by George Crabbe
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