Logo DBNL
Outalissi; a Tale of Dutch Guiana (1826)

Outalissi; a Tale of Dutch Guiana

(1826)–Christopher Edward Lefroy–rechtenstatus Auteursrechtvrij

Vorige Volgende

Chapter X. The Hospital.

 
‘Ye who the killing agony have proved,
 
To see the friend whom from a child you loved,
 
With falt'ring lips call blessings on your head,
 
And wring your hand, and sink among the dead,
 
'Tis yours the hypocrite's pretence to scan,
 
Who, heaven denying, boasts him friend to man.’

Edward Bentinck was not kept above two or three days in suspense as to the effect of the information which he had communicated to the colonial government upon his late neighbour, although they were two or three days of the greatest anxiety and uneasiness he had ever experienced in his life; nor was the state of his mind much improved when he heard that Mr. Cotton had been apprehended and brought to town as the consignee of the cargo of Africans brought to him by Monsieur Légere, and lodged in the criminal gaol, which was situated within the garrison, and in fact formed a part of the fortress which defended the town of Paramaribo.

Mr. Cotton, as was customary with opulent planters, in addition to his plantation house, had also an establishment at Paramaribo, where he sometimes resided for several months of the calender winter. In this house his daughter, who, upon her father's apprehension, had attended him to town for the sake of being near him and paying him daily visits, was now residing; and the very next morning after Edward heard of her arrival he called at the house, and (his heart almost audibly out-knocking his hand) inquired if she was at home?

‘Yes, sir, she's at home,’ said one of her little black pages; ‘but’- with a look of reproach that said more emphatically than any words could have done - ‘you are the last person that can ever again be welcome here.’

‘Is she ill then?’ said Edward.

‘No, massa, not ill, but sick in heart a little,’ replied Lucy.

‘Take her this card will you, Lucy,’ said Edward, ‘and say that the gentleman whose name is upon it, requests the honour of an interview.’

‘Missy says that you must excuse her,’ said the messenger returning in a few minutes, ‘she cannot see you, sir.’

Edward Bentinck now perceived as he walked

ponderingly home, that he was considered as the original and sole instigator of the arrest of the slave captain and his accessories, and when he recollected how many probable enemies the opinions and principles which he had avowed and maintained had already occasioned him, who would be but too happy to turpify the character of the step he had taken, by the use of every epithet and expression which conveyed a shade of moral insinuation - such English unpatriotic opinions! such fanatical hypocrisy! such gratuitous officiousness! such ungrateful duplicity! they would exclaim - he could not but feel that his conscientious obedience to the duties of humanity, had exposed to irretrievable ruin the fondest wishes of his heart, and all those distant imaginary, yet dear deluding structures of hope, which an uncorrupted heart of twenty-five will build of paradisiacal materials, came tumbling about his ears. In this situation he resolved however, to persist in seeking some opportunity of pleading his case before Matilda, by disclosing as much of the real fact as he could without endangering his informant, and the course of reflection and conscientious feeling of paramount duty which led him to become the medium of such informant's communication to the colonial government, as he thought himself sure, that if she would

but allow him to explain his motives in many of which he knew she would concur, they must at least extenuate his conduct in her opinion. Accordingly, in the course of a few days, he learned the hour in which it was customary for Matilda to visit her father in the prison within the fort; and upon one of these occasions on her leaving the prison, he presented himself to her and respectfully requested the honour of attending her home.

‘This is persecution, sir!’ said Matilda, ‘do not avail yourself of my father's present melancholy situation, occasioned as we are informed by yourself, to interrupt me in the discharge of my daily duties and affection towards him.’

‘If I were not certain,’ said Edward, ‘that Miss Cotton was under a misapprehension, I would not have exposed myself to so severe a charge from her, I only entreat permission to explain some of the appearances against me.’

‘I cannot hear you sir,’ said Matilda, ‘I cannot with propriety hear a vindication of his conduct from any gentleman, who is in no way accountable to me for it.’

‘But is it consistent with Christian justice even, much less Christian charity,’ said Edward, ‘to condemn any one unheard? and must I innocently lose a good opinion I so much value without

an opportunity being afforded me of exculpation?’

‘I entreat you to leave me, sir,’ said Matilda, ‘I dare not continue the conversation, I have promised my father I would not permit you to renew your visits without his consent, and it would be inhuman at present even to mention to him a subject of so much irritation.’

‘Only then,’ said Edward, ‘let me implore Miss Cotton to suspend her own judgment for the present, and I will forbear to solicit the indulgence of exchanging another word with her.’

‘My judgment,’ said Matilda, rather softened, would rejoice to acquit any one of whom I had ever thought so well as I confess I have done of Mr. Bentinck, I could almost have pledged my own faith for the sincerity and security of his, but do not mistake me, sir, or overrate the value of my judgment, it can never be of any consequence to you, I must again beg you to leave me, Mr. Bentinck! I cannot ask you in.’

‘After knowing your promise to Mr. Cotton,’ said Edward, ‘I would not, without your permission, put my foot over the threshold to save my life, I will not even ask you any more to acquit me, but do not repel my dependance on your charity, for a few weeks at least not to condemn --.’

‘Good morning to you, sir,’ said Matilda, as she entered her house, ‘I would not have my father know that I have allowed myself even the conversation which has just passed with you.’

Upon the whole Edward was not greatly relieved by this conversation from his depression, for although where any real wish exists in the breast of the judge for the innocence of the accused, exculpation is comparatively easy, yet this could be the case with only one of his judges, and supposing he could ever succeed in convincing Miss Cotton of the propriety of his conduct, or at least of the honesty of his motives, what chance had he of overcoming the resentment of her father, who was undeniably the sufferer from it? He did not return home therefore after leaving Miss Cotton, but continued in a state of rather melancholy abstraction, to wander about the savannahs adjoining the town, and from thence strayed almost unconsciously through an umbrageous single path for four or five miles into the bush or wood, till he came to a small cleared area of cultivation, belonging to an old Indian known by the name of Pannana, who lived there with his wife and family in a little thatched cabin of his own construction, under the shade of his own plantains, interspersed with small fields of rice of his own cultivation, and

without the circle of his little farm, peninsulated from the rest of the world by interminable and impervious forests. The deep seclusion and seeming repose of the spot as Edward approached it affected him, and he could not help ejaculating, ‘O God! for such an impenetrable home, with an adapted constitution, and one adored and devoted companion, looking with me through the moral vista of revelation, (or even the hopes of natural religion undisturbed by any option of light or consequent misgiving for having rejected it,) to the renovation and perfection of our being, and the eternal production of all the delightful sanctimonies of our earthly connexion in a still better world! would not every advantage past, present, and prospective, which I derive from what is called civilization and European refinement, be well exchanged?’

The old man was sitting under the colonnade, which is always formed in the Indian and negro cabins by the projection of the thatch, with a little granddaughter of three or four years old upon his knee. ‘Are you a Christian, my friend?’ said Edward.

‘No! massa! me no Christian,’ replied Pannana.

‘But why, living so near Paramaribo, do you

not send your children to school there, to learn Christianity and general knowledge out of the white man's book?’

‘Christianity is no good, massa,’ said Pannana, ‘Christianity make them good for nothing. Christians have all our faults, massa, and many modes and practices of theft, falsehood, treachery, and cruelty, which we disdain.’

‘But,’ said Edward, ‘you must see that the Christians have so much more knowledge than you have, which contributes to the enjoyment of life, I wonder you do not think it worth while to take some pains to acquire it?’

‘True, massa,’ said Pannana; ‘but knowledge, a tree which bears two fruits, the one a slow and deadly poison, but delicious, and the other good for dressy (curing) the heart, but bad for taste, massa. Which you think children eat most of, if you send them to the tree?’

‘But God Almighty,’ said Edward, ‘many hundred years ago sent his own Son into the world to instruct all men, white, black, and red, in their duty, and commanded us all to attend to his instructions, on pain of his eternal displeasure.’

‘And do you really believe,’ said the Indian, ‘that we and our forefathers are all, as you would teach us, condemned to suffer eternal torments in

another world, because we have not been taught your mysterious novelties? Are we not the work of God? And can the Almighty not manifest his will without the help of a book? If this is true, and God is just, then how is it consistent with his justice to force life upon us without our consent, and then to condemn us to eternal damnation, because we did not meet with you? No, massa, we are convinced that the Christians are more depraved in morals than we Indians, if we may judge of their doctrines by the general badness of their lives.’*

‘God condemns only for the rejection of light,’ said Edward, ‘he will not punish you for not meeting with Christians; but, having met with them, for neglecting to avail yourselves of the opportunity of learning his will through them; as you know very well that what the Christians tell you of loving and fearing God, and doing as he bids you, because you love and fear him, and obeying his next and second great commandment, to love your neighbour as yourself, and do to others as you would have others do to you, is all true, because God assures you that it is so by his own direct palaver with your own heart.’

‘Massa,’ said Pannana, ‘what Christians say, very true and good; what Christians do, very false and bad; which we believe, massa? our fathers always talkee Christians were devils, massa! Christians hunt 'em - Christians shoot 'em - Christians make slave of 'em;’ then stamping with his foot, with great indignation, ‘this,’ said he, ‘not your country, massa? - this my country? - this my father's country, till Christians come and rob us of all, massa?’

‘I did not mean to offend you,’ said Edward, ‘I thought, as you live so near the Christians, you might probably be upon better terms with them.’

‘No, massa, you no offend me,’ said Pannana, ‘you seem good massa, and talk kindly to poor Indian, and me no talk of Christians that live now, massa; some of whom are come more bettra, massa, since they knew us, and we not all good neither, massa; there are bad Indians, as well as good Christians. But you know what they now call Oroocoocoo Snake,* massa! O, ougree, massa! If you touch him, he kill you; our fathers used to call him Christian, massa!’

Edward feeling that proselytism to any extent against such strong traditional prepossessions,

strengthened by the vicious habits and example of almost every nominal Christian resident in the colony, excepting the missionaries, must be either a work of miracle or preceded by the reformation of the Christians themselves, thought it in vain to pursue the conversation; and, therefore, after tasting some of Pannana's palm wine,* which was very delicious, and telling him that he might, perhaps, repeat his visit, which the old man said he should consider as a promise, he took his leave.

But between the propagation of Christianity, the difficulties of maintaining his own Christian consistency, the obstacles to the prosecution of the wishes nearest his heart, and which, although a few months ago, he thought himself quite proof against, were now daily acquiring a more uncontroulable ascendancy; the hot-water in which he had involved himself with the governor, and the collision of almost all his opinions with those of his military companions, so completely absorbed his attention, that he somehow or another took a

wrong turn, which only led him more deeply into the wood, from which, when it became quite dark, he found it impossible to extricate himself till the next morning.

The day had fortunately been a dry one, and from a gun-flint and a knife, which he happened to carry about him, having made a blazing fire, he passed the night better than he expected; but the next morning, on his arrival at the garrison, from anxiety of mind and the extreme noxiousness in such a latitude of the heavy dews and vapours, and occasional rains to which he had been exposed without shelter all the night, he was soon seized with the symptoms of violent fever and ague, and conveyed immediately to the officers' ward in the hospital.

For eight or ten days his fever increased rapidly, till it reached its climax, producing considerable inflammation of the brain; but yet, except in intervals of actual delirium, from the agony it occasioned him, Edward Bentinck did not lose his self-possession; but, after the fever was abated, so rapid had been the complete prostration of his strength, and such was the extreme state of his exhaustion, that he could not stand a minute upon his feet without fainting, and he lay for many nights apprehensive of removal before morning to the other world from

cramp or spasms in the stomach; during this time the great question of the truth or falsehood of the religious impressions in which he had been educated could not but press anxiously upon his mind, he reviewed all the evidences that he could think of, both for and against their divine origin, and the former seemed to gain both light and weight as his approach towards death and disengagement from external objects threw the latter more and more into the distance, and as the influence of his senses subsided, the unselfish benignity of the spirit of Christianity and the beauty of its spotless holiness carried stronger and stronger conviction to his unsophisticated heart, that such a religion could not be of earth, or as every thing must partake of the spirit and nature of its origin, it must have been more earthly. The composure arising from such an anchor of his soul in its utmost emergency and the increasing confidence in its sufficiency, which he derived from every examination, contributed materially to prevent a fatal issue to his fever; but it was many days before he could leave his bed or walk across the room, and weeks before he began to recruit his strength sufficiently to think of resuming his military duties, and would have been much longer, but for a little incident, of the effect of which the medicines and diet got all

the credit, but which, in fact, was of more service than both together.

Edward happened one day, at the commencement of his convalescence, to be standing near the door of the ward, which was a little ajar, when he thought he heard a voice he was acquainted with, saying to the nurse, as she approached the ward -

‘Missy bid me tell you,’ (Negro idiom) ‘how is Mr. Bentinck?’

‘Who is your mistress?’ said the nurse, ‘I never answer inquiries unless I know from whom they come.’

‘Missy no let me say datty,’ replied the messenger.

‘Well then, you may go back to your mistress, and tell her what I say.’

Which the messenger accordingly did.

‘Was any one inquiring after me, nurse?’ said Edward, when she entered the room.

‘A little girl, sir; but as she would not tell me who sent her, I sent her away; but she will be here again presently, I have no doubt, as she seemed very reluctant to go back without an answer. Would you like to see her, sir, when she returns?’

‘No, on no account,’ said Edward, ‘as her mistress does not wish that I should know her,

and if I should have seen the messenger before, the former would, perhaps, learn that she was discovered; but, if she calls again, I wish you would speak to her just outside the door, and leave it a little open, that I may try and distinguish the voice.’

In a few minutes a tap at the door summoned the nurse out of the room, who beckoned to Edward to follow her to the door, where he soon heard the same voice say,

‘Missy say she cannot tell you her name; but she bid me give you this,’ offering the nurse some money, ‘and beg you to send her an answer to her inquiry?’

‘Mr. Bentinck,’ said the nurse, taking the douceur, ‘is rather better, but it is tedious slow work, in this climate, recovering from such an attack as his; if there had not been some strong secret hope in his heart of something for him to live for, he must have sunk under such a fever, like the poor gentlemen on the beds on each side of him, and they have not either of them many days to live, I am sure.’

‘Thank ye,’ said Lucy, whose voice Edward now distinctly recognised, and off she flew with her message.

From that moment the convalescence of the

patient, who was the object of such an interest, became decisive, whilst the declension of strength of his two companions, to whom the nurse alluded, and of whom I will now give some account, was daily more obvious.

I will just observe first, however, that the issue of fevers in the West Indies depends almost entirely upon the state of the mind, and I cannot see why, from this and many other notorious instances of mental influence on material complaints, one might not as well contend for the non-existence of matter, as to adopt the reasoning of Mr. Lawrence and other sceptical anatomists, and contend, from the occasional influence of matter over mind, for the non-existence of the latter.

One of Edward's next neighbours, in the ward, was a young Hanoverian, who had been a Lieutenant in the German Legion, in the British service; but being reduced at the peace, had entered the service of Bolivar, where, besides his rations, he got literally nothing but hard blows and broken promises - never a stiver of pay - and his lodgings and clothing were always of the worst, and most scanty description; he soon, therefore, quitted that service in disgust, and from his acquaintance with an Hanoverian officer of rank in the Netherlands army, then commanding the troops in Surinam,

he came there upon the medical staff, for which he had been originally educated; but dissatisfaction with his present circumstances and slow prospect of promotion, although quite a young man, concurred with the malaria of the climate to reduce him to his present condition. He was a determined materialist; he professed, indeed, a sort of belief in a God, but derided the doctrine of a particular Providence, and laughed at the idea of his being accessible to prayer, or suspending for a moment the operation of those laws of matter to which he had, somehow or other, irrevocably committed the world: in fact, for any purpose of consolation to himself or value to human society, he might just as well have been an absolute Atheist.

‘Oh, sir, I am a miserable man,’ said he one day to Edward, ‘I want to write a letter, and I have not strength.’

‘Be composed,’ said Edward, ‘and to-morrow, perhaps, you will be able.’

‘To-morrow, sir!’ cried he with vehemence; ‘You do not know what you are talking about. The doctor told me to-day - yes, he did, that I should not live till to-morrow. May God Almighty prove him a liar! Why did he not tell me the real state of my case sooner? Well, when I am dead, I hope my corpse will bring a plague upon

the house, and infect every one that comes near it. May every Dutchman and Spaniard that meets my burial in the street drop down dead, and be eternally damned! I have served them both, and do not know which are the greatest rascals! I was at Schimmelpinninck's funeral the other day - the coffin was hardly big enough to hold him, and what a burying-place! The coffins are all piled one above another, and their corners stick through the ground - the carrion vultures flew about as if they were glad to see us in our black clothes. I'll be laid there by and by - Lord help me! But I must write that letter!’

‘You cannot write in your present state of agitation,’ said Edward, ‘would it not compose you to read a chapter in the Bible, or let me read one to you?’

‘That's all d--d humbug sir; all imposture and jugglery, you may depend upon it. Not that I ever examined the subject quite as much as I ought; but it is too late, now this accursed fever has moored me fast, and death will soon explain to me the grand secret, without the trouble of my examining the question at all. But I must write that letter! I have something on my mind which I would not disclose; but I had rather the whole world should know it, than that I should die, and

when that's off my mind, it may perhaps relieve me. Is there no help? Is there no power in physic? Oh, it would be nothing to be shot in battle! - nothing to founder at sea! - nothing compared with dying in this gloomy deliberate way. Oh, this accursed climate; and yet it is so natural for a man to love his country, that I should not be surprised to hear one of these amphibious frogs of Dutchmen say, that this infernal steam-kettle of an atmosphere, was the finest climate in the world.’ *

In this way he continued cursing the hour of his birth, and every object and thing that surrounded him, till after a considerable intermission of his execrations, Edward found, on addressing him, that he was dead.

Edward Bentinck's sick neighbour, on the other side of his bed, was a young Englishman, of the name of Shelford, who had come out with him from Europe, to look after a considerable property, which had devolved on him by the death of a planter, nearly belated, in hopes of returning in a few years with sufficient fortune to pursue an attachment, which he had formed before he left England, to a girl of great beauty, as far as could

be judged from the miniature found upon his heart; but which, alas! ‘a wealthless lot,’ had compelled him for a time to forego. He had been moved into the military hospital on his seizure, in preference to continuing in his own house, for the benefit of the advice and attentions of the military medical staff, who were considered the most skilful febricians in the colony. He was a delightful fellow, with a heart responsive to every emotion of generosity - a perfect gentleman in short, and incapable of being a blackguard. If the reader asks what is a gentleman - and what is a blackguard? the definition, perhaps, will be rather difficult, from the infinite number of shades of each of those characters, which sometimes seem to approach almost to an identity; but every one knows there is, in fact, as much difference between a gentleman and a blackguard, as there is (if the reader will pardon for once the use of an expressive vulgar proverb) ‘between a silk purse and a sow's ear,’ and that you can never make one of the other. A gentleman, amongst other characteristics, is, especially a man of good faith, a man who sweareth to his neighbour and disappointeth him not, although it were to his own hindrance, the very antipodes of the personification of the spirit of law, a man who always binds himself by the spirit and

never shelters himself from its demands under the letter of his engagements, a man who would lose all his self-respect if he ever had recourse, from mercenary or interested motives, to falsehood, subterfuge, equivocation, or deceit, a man of perfect self-command and modest undogmatical manners, a man of urbanity, benevolence, and equable courtesy to all, a man of obvious pride, but proud only of his superiority to meanness, ever ready to make allowance for the failings of others, but never of his own: the word Christian is the nearest to a synonyme for gentleman; but Christian and gentleman are not convertible terms, because there are many duties that belong to the consistency of each character, which are not reciprocal. Christianity is in some of its aspects a dispensation of such sublime and lofty mercy, that it seems beneath the infinitude of its importance to dole out its bounties with rigid precision of correspondence to the degrees of variance in the temporal character of its disciples; it is not, therefore, for any human judgment to pronounce with what inequality of progress and imperfection of consistency the sincere desire and endeavour of conformity to its spirit may entitle any one to the glorious name, and still more glorious death-conquering privileges of a Christian; there is about a gentleman too a

feeling of aristocracy of difficult reconciliation with the repulse of all egotistical pretension and the uniform inculcation of self-abasement, which pervade the doctrines of the cross, but where these two characters of gentleman and Christian meet, or rather when the latter is engrafted on the former, they constitute together the model of social excellence, the utmost perfection of humanity; such was poor Shelford. He had since his arrival in Surinam been misled occasionally into some of those irregularities which young unmarried men for the most part, I am afraid, consider as quite venial, and practice without scruple; but he had great misgivings about them, for his heart and principles were as sound as a rock.

The morning after the death of the young German, he called Edward close to his bed-side; ‘Bentinck!’ said he, ‘I have been in this hospital once before, but I have never been quite so ill as I am now, and the desperate departure of our poor companion, reminds me that I have no time to lose in throwing myself upon the support of the religious principles in which I have been most carefully and affectionately brought up, for such is the agony I suffer, that it is impossible I can live many days unless it abates. My mother has been long dead, but an excellent aunt supplied her

place in confirming upon my heart the strong religious impressions that are interwoven there with the remembrance of my dear mother's affection. We have, I believe, both of us been educated in the same faith, for I have often heard you express your confidence in the truth of Christianity, will you allow me to go over with you some points of its evidences?’ Upon Edward's assenting and drawing a chair close to his head, ‘look,’ said he putting out his furred and swollen tongue to shew the fury of the raging fever that was consuming him, and pressing Edward's hand on his burning forehead, ‘I feel as if my brain was burning to a cinder between two fires, I therefore want no argument to convince me of the existence of evil, and moral evil must have preceded physical, now to suppose that a being who had not strength to retain the upright moral posture of his creation, should be able to recover and maintain it after being crippled by a fall, without some such preternatural interposition of his maker as that which Christianity explains to us, seems to me an absolute absurdity, do you think so Bentinck?’

‘Indeed I do,’ said Edward; ‘I have no other hope for myself but in the great atonement of the death of Christ, and the silent and generally gradual but not the less preternatural influence of

God's spirit upon the hearts of those who earnestly and perseveringly implore it, purchased for them by that atonement.’

‘Well then,’ said Shelford, ‘the only other question is the mode of availing ourselves of it. I see clearly,’ said he, ‘that I have contracted some wrong habits, which nothing but such a sickness as this would have given me resolution to break off, but which now if it should please God to restore me, I am determined to overcome; therefore, whether the issue of this sickness be life or death, I feel satisfied that it has been sent to me in mercy, at the same time my life has not been without trials and prevailing efforts to act right, but I endeavour as much as I can to look out of myself altogether, and confide exclusively in the mercy more adequately purchased by Christ's blood, not’ said he emphatically, ‘that I am an Antinomian and think human efforts of no consequence, far from it! but our best motives are so mixed, that I feel now that I dare not trust to them; I feel no resentments, but forgive from the bottom of my heart any who have injured me, and am I trust in perfect charity with all men. I cannot say that I have no wish to live, at my age the summer of life is all before me, and I have brothers and sisters and many friends in England, besides

my father whose partiality and constant kindness the thought of enjoying again in this world is very delightful to me, and death in itself is an awful change to any man of reflection, but I think I have courage to meet it, if it should so please God, do you think I am in a proper state of mind to do so?’

‘You really make me envy you,’ said Edward, ‘your views of your present situation altogether, and your belief in the truth and value of Christianity seem so rational and manly.’

‘O! there I'm fixed,’ said he, with great energy, ‘I never doubted! You know not how thankful I am now to my father and friends for their discouragement in me of some opinions that seemed favourable to infidelity.’

‘Shall I read to you,’ said Edward, ‘from the Bible, or any of the prayers from the service of the church of England?’

‘I have them all by heart!’ said Shelford, ‘I have them all by heart! No! leave me for the present, now as I am a little exhausted.’

After this Shelford said little till near midnight, when, having declined any more medicine, and feeling his end approaching, he called Edward and pressing his hand said, ‘Bentinck! you know my friends, its God's will that I should die in exile,

but I thank him that it is not without a witness to acquaint them that although my life has not been faultless, my death did not disgrace their Christian goodness and example. God bless you!’

These were his last words, and after a few convulsive respirations in less than ten minutes he had entirely ceased to breathe. ‘Curse it! I can't help it,’ said Edward as he turned from the bed-side sobbing like an infant, ‘Christianity then does not always fail men at the hour of death!!!’

I don't know what made Edward Bentinck swear unless it was at his own sensibility, but as a mere narrator I am bound to tell the truth, he did so; he had scarcely heard from Shelford a single expression of impatience during his whole sickness, and nothing could exceed the manly composure and calm fortitude with which he met his death: the contrast between him and the young German naturally drew forth the last part of the foregoing exclamation of Edward, and could not but make on him the deepest and most salutary impression.

The following lines were found in Shelford's pocket book, they are not perhaps his own, or if they are, they were not intended probably to express his own feelings and circumstances, but were written from a partial sympathy with those of some

unhappy inmate of the same sick ward, with which he became acquainted on some former occasion.

THE DYING EXILE.
 
I should like to have died in my birth-place,
 
In spite of my errors, perhaps, then
 
The affection of those who once lov'd me
 
Might have pitied and sooth'd me again.
 
 
 
But here all is dark and appalling,
 
If a prayer to my Saviour I sigh,
 
My spirit from pardon recalling,
 
‘O! that's all d--d humbug,’ they cry.
 
 
 
O! could I but describe my emotion,
 
When open before me one day,
 
My name in a book of devotion,
 
Inscribed by my mother, there lay.
 
 
 
The word seem'd to startle my ear;
 
Did I ever a mother embrace?
 
No! my heart said, else how came I here,
 
So contrasted the thought and the place.
 
 
 
On the wall had I seen here another
 
Hand writing of God, as of yore,
 
Than a name of such mercy as mother,
 
It could scarcely have startled me more.
 
 
 
But thank God in the grave she's reposing,
 
The trials, with life only closing,
 
Which she'd borne a son to go through.
 
 
 
Yet there is a relation diviner,
 
Half repairing the moral of time,
 
Which has charities closer and finer,
 
And sanctities still more sublime.
 
 
 
To this I've too fondly aspired,
 
For this I've all dangers defied,
 
This the only reward I've desired,
 
And this gain'd, I could calmly have died.
 
 
 
With this hope from frenzy to shield me,
 
Through all climes of the world could I roam,
 
Content, if at last it would yield me
 
The bliss of a personal home.
 
 
 
But my gourd, like the prophet's, is wasted,
 
And to God's ways I cannot say well!
 
Life's sole chaste cup of pleasure untasted,
 
     Hell!
 
 
 
But whence comes, from above or below,
 
The fine form which my sight stands before,
 
It's of beauty angelic! but so
 
Is one which on earth I adore.
 
 
 
It is one from the land of my birth,
 
Life's last anguish to sooth, nor in vain,
 
For a hope's stealing o'er me, when vanish'd this earth,
 
We shall meet in some union, unsullied by pain,
 
Of more intimate rapture, and still richer worth,
 
Than that which in this world I've fail'd to attain,
 
In yon starry Eden again.
 
Thus, his fancy, poor fellow! his heart springs relieving,
 
The sad exile ceased cursing and wept,
 
Then slightly convulsing, he drew his last breath,
 
But so placid the smile on his lips, after death,
 
You might almost imagine life left him, believing,
 
On the bosom he worshipp'd he slept;
 
     he slept.

Vorige Volgende

Over het gehele werk

landen