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ys and nights reveal'd The desolation of his poverty Felt every nerve that at the first great shock Was paralyzed, grow sensitive and shrink As from a fresh-cut wound. There was no son To come in beauty of his manly prime With words of counsel and with vigorous hand To aid him in his need, no daughter's arm To twine around him in his weariness, Nor kiss of grandchild at the even-tide Going to rest, with prayer upon its lips. Still a new trial waits. The blessed health Heaven's boon, thro' which with unbow'd form we bear Burdens and ills, forsook him. Maladies Of fierce and festering virulence attack'd His swollen limbs. Incessant, grinding pains Laid his strength prostrate, till he counted life A loathed thing. Dire visions frighted sleep That sweet restorer of the wasted frame, And mid his tossings to and fro, he moan'd Oh, when shall I arise, and Night be gone! Despondence seized him. To the lowliest place Alone he stole, and sadly took his seat In dust and ashes. She, his bosom friend The sharer of his lot for many years, Sought out his dark retreat. Shuddering she saw His kingly form like living sepulchre, And in the maddening haste of sorrow said God hath forgotten. She with him had borne Unuttered woe o'er the untimely graves Of all whom she had nourished,--shared with him The silence of a home that hath no child, The plunge from wealth to want, the base contempt Of menial and of ingrate;--but to see The dearest object of adoring love Her next to God, a prey to vile disease Hideous and loathsome, all the beauty marred That she had worshipped from her ardent youth Deeming it half divine, she could not bear, Her woman's strength gave way, and impious words In her despair she uttered. But her lord To deeper anguish stung by her defect And rash advice, reprovingly replied Pointing to Him who meeteth out below Both good and evil in mysterious love, And she was silenced. What a sacred power Hath hallow'd Friendship o'er the nameless ills That throng our pilgrimage. Its sympathy, Doth undergird the drooping, and uphold The foot that falters in its miry path. It grows more precious, as the hair grows grey. Time's alchymy that rendereth so much dross Back for our gay entrustments, shows more pure The perfect essence of its sanctity, Gold unalloyed. How doth the cordi
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