18
That night I forgat a’ the toil an’ the pain
O’ wearisome years on the dangerous main;
But my mither was gane ere I gaed to the sea,
An' a sigh o' regret passed amid a’ the glee.
THE IDIOT.
Nature had formed poor hapless Ned
A thing of idiot mind;
Yet to the poor unreasoning boy
She was not quite unkind;
For Sarah lov’d her hapless child,
Whom helplessness made dear;
And life was happiness to him,
Who had no hope nor fear.
She knew his wants, she understood
Each half artic’late call;
And he was ev’ry thing to her,
And she to him was all.
And so for many a year they dwelt,
Nor knew a wish beside;
But age at length on Sarah came,
And she fell sick and died.
He tried in vain to waken her,
And call’d her o’er and o’er;
They told him she was dead—the sound
To him no import bore.
They clos’d her eyes and shrouded her,
And he stood wond’ring by;
And when they bore her to the grave,
He follow’d silently.
They laid her in the narrow house,
They sung the funeral stave;
But when the funeral train dispers’d,
He loiter’d near the grave.
The rabble boys who used to jeer,
Whene’er they saw poor Ned,
Now stood and watch’d him at the grave,
And not a word they said.
