Thou should'st have longer liv'd, and to the grave <br />Have peacefully gone down in full old age! <br />Thy children would have tended thy gray hairs. <br />We might have sat, as we have often done, <br />By our fireside, and talk'd whole nights away, <br />Old times, old friends, and old events recalling; <br />With many a circumstance, of trivial note, <br />To memory dear, and of importance grown. <br />How shall we tell them in a stranger's ear? <br />A wayward son ofttimes was I to thee; <br />And yet, in all our little bickerings, <br />Domestic jars, there was, I know not what, <br />Of tender feeling, that were ill exchang'd <br />For this world's chilling friendships, and their smiles <br />Familiar, whom the heart calls strangers still. <br />A heavy lot hath he, most wretched man! <br />Who lives the last of all his family. <br />He looks around him, and his eye discerns <br />The face of the stranger, and his heart is sick. <br />Man of the world, what canst thou do for him? <br />Wealth is a burden, which he could not bear; <br />Mirth a strange crime, the which he dares not act; <br />And wine no cordial, but a bitter cup. <br />For wounds like his Christ is the only cure, <br />And gospel promises are his by right, <br />For these were given to the poor in heart. <br />Go, preach thou to him of a world to come, <br />Where friends shall meet, and know each other's face. <br />Say less than this, and say it to the winds. <br /> <br />October 1797<br /><br />Charles Lamb<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/written-soon-after-the-preceding-poem/
