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XIII.

The parson preached on Vanity,
And taught his simple flock
How lust of gold would cheat the hope
Till the very fiends did mock,–
The vanity of vanities–
The lesson new and old–
That virtue was the only wealth
Whose sum was never told;
That love of money chilled the heart
And made the free a slave,
And took away from life and soul
More bounties than it gave;
That all the gold was ever coined
Was impotent to buy
Departed youth, lost peace of mind,
A sunbeam in the sky.
Or half a minute from the grave
In life’s last agony.

XIV.

“Behold!” he said, “the honest man
Who earns his daily bread,
And, unabashed, lifts up to Heaven
His independent head;
And taking blessings when they come,
Enjoys them while they last;
And waits the future day with hope,
While thankful for the past.
And look at Croesus, old and sad,
With millions in his store–
With parks and farms, and mines and mills,
And fisheries on the shore:–
His money is his bane of life,
He dreads the workhouse door.

XV.

“He dreams his wife, his child, his friends,
His servants, all mankind.
Are leagued to plunder and deceive–
He trembles at the wind:
He shakes with palsy and distrust–
He fares like beggar hind.
He grudges nature half the crust
That hungry need demands,
And sees in visions of the day
The auction of his lands;
His body in the pauper’s grave,
His gold in robber hands.”

XVI.

A sigh, deep-drawn, betrayed some heart
That felt compunctious wrong;–
The preacher heard; oh, lonely heart!
Take courage and be strong!–
“Behold again, how Sporus lived
From youth till past his prime–
From morn of manhood to its eve–
He toiled for future time,
His forehead turned from Heaven to Earth,
In picking gold from slime;
Gold for his need, to keep and breed,
That ere his life’s last hour.
Among the mighty of the land.
The Lord of hall and bower,
He might be worshipped for his wealth.
And float in seas of power.

XVII.

“Unhappy prisoner,–self-immured!
Poor hunter of a shade!
The o’er-laboured brain refused its work–
The fire of life decayed;
Amid the ruins of his mind,
Enthroned in darkness grim,
Lord of his life, there sat a fiend
Would tear him limb from limb;
Oh Death, that pitiest all below.
Look down and pity him!”

XVIII.

Again an audible sigh escaped
A sinner in the crowd;–
None knew the heart that thus betrayed
Its agonies aloud:
But the preacher looked with eyes benign;–
“Come! hear an olden tale,
Culled from the storehouse of the Past–
A truth within the veil.”

XIX.

The murmurous river of breath was hushed,–
Like the ripple of a brook,
When the sudden frost comes flashing down
And fixes it with a look;–
So vast the silence as he spoke,
You might have heard the grass
Rustle and wave to the fitful winds,
And the bee, in haste to pass,
Sounding a trump like a martial call
On a clarion of brass.

XX.

You might have heard the sparrow cheep
Mid the yew-berries juicy red,
And the long rank nettles singing a dirge
Over the nameless dead,
Where they lay as calmly as the ‘squire
With the ‘scutcheons o’er his head–
Calmly, calmly, pauper and ‘squire,
Each in his narrow hed!