Thou too art dead, ---! very kind <br />Hast thou been to me in my childish days, <br />Thou best good creature. I have not forgot <br />How thou didst love thy Charles, when he was yet <br />A prating school-boy: I have not forgot <br />The busy joy on that important day, <br />When, child-like, the poor wanderer was content <br />To leave the bosom of parental love, <br />His childhood's play-place, and his early home, <br />For the rude fosterings of a stranger's hand, <br />Hard uncouth tasks, and school-boy's scanty fare. <br />How did thine eye peruse him round and round, <br />And hardly know him in his yellow coats[1], <br />Red leathern belt, and gown of russet blue! <br />Farewell, good aunt! <br />Go thou, and occupy the same grave-bed <br />Where the dead mother lies. <br />Oh my dear mother, oh thou dear dead saint! <br />Where's now that placid face, where oft hath sat <br />A mother's smile, to think her son should thrive <br />In this bad world, when she was dead and gone; <br />And where a tear hath sat (take shame, O son!) <br />When that same child has prov'd himself unkind. <br />One parent yet is left-a wretched thing, <br />A sad survivor of his buried wife, <br />A palsy-smitten, childish, old, old man, <br />A semblance most forlorn of what he was, <br />A merry cheerful man. A merrier man, <br />A man more apt to frame matter for mirth, <br />Mad jokes, and anticks for a Christmas eve; <br />Making life social, and the laggard time <br />To move on nimbly, never yet did cheer <br />The little circle of domestic friends. <br /> <br />February 1797<br /><br />Charles Lamb<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/written-on-the-day-of-my-aunt-s-funeral/
