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Beauties of ... George Crabbe, with a biographical sketch
Beauties of George Crabbe with a biographical sketch Author:George Crabbe Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CLUBS. here their meetings hold, Convivial sects, and bucks alert and bold; A kind of Masons, but without their sign; The bonds of union—pleasure, song, an... more »d wine. Man, a gregarious creature, loves to fly, Where he the trackings of the herd can spy; Still to be one with many he desires, Although it leads him thro' the thorns and briars. A few! but few there are, who. in the mind Perpetual source of consolation find ; The weaker many to the world will come, For comforts seldom to be found from home. When the faint hands no more a brimmer hold, When flannel-wreaths the useless limbs enfold, The breath impeded, and the bosom cold; When half the pillow'd man the palsy chains, And the blood falters in the bloated veins; Then, as our friends no further aid supply Than hope's cold phrase, and courtesy's soft sigh, We should that comfort for ourselves ensure, Which friends could not, if we could friends, procure. Early in life, when we can laugh aloud, There's something pleasant in a social crowd, Who laugh with us;—but will such joy remain, When we lie struggling on the bed of pain ? When our physician tells us, with a sigh, No more on hope and science to rely, Life's staff is useless then; with labouring breath We pray for hope divine—the staff of death: This is a scene which few companions grace, And where the heart's first favourites yield their place. Here all the aid of man to man must end; Here mounts the soul to her eternal Friend; The tenderest love must here its tie resign, And give th' aspiring heat to love divine. Men feel their weakness, and to numbers run, Themselves to strengthen, or themselves to shun; But tho' to this our weakness may be prone, Let's learn to live, for we must die, alone. Ibid. chapter{Section 4DEATH. There was, 't...« less