"Kate is Craz'd"

COWPER.

"There often wanders one, whom better days
Saw better clad, in cloak of satin trimmed
With lace, and hat with splendid riband bound.
A serving-maid was she, and fell in love
With one who left her, went to sea, and died.
Her fancy followed him through foaming waves
To distant shores; and she would sit and weep
At what a sailor suffers; fancy too,
Delusive most where warmest wishes are,
Would oft anticipate his glad return,
And dream of transports she was not to know.
She heard the doleful tidings of his death—
And never smiled again! and now she roams
The dreary waste; there spends the livelong day,
And there, unless when charity forbids,
The livelong night. A tattered apron hides,
Worn as a cloak, and hardly hides, a gown
More tattered still; and both but ill conceal
A bosom heaved with never-ceasing sighs.
She begs an idle pin of all she meets,
And hoards them in her sleeve; but needful food,
Though pressed with hunger oft, or comelier clothes,
Though pinched with cold, asks never.—Kate is craz’d."


How wonderful! how beautiful! these words
    Are but the usual recompense assigned
    To usual efforts of the human mind.
And yet how little jars these mighty chords!
How soon but one uneasy hour affords
    Space for disunion and for disarray,
    To mar the music of an earlier day!
It is a fearful thing to live, yet be
    That which is scarcely life the spirit fled—
    Death at the heart—our nobler self is dead—
The reasoning and responsible, while we
Live, like the birds around, unconsciously.
    God! in thy mercy keep us from such doom,
    Let not our mind precede us to our tomb!