English Eclogues III - The Funeral

The coffin as I past across the lane
  Came sudden on my view. It was not here,
  A sight of every day, as in the streets
  Of the great city, and we paus'd and ask'd
  Who to the grave was going. It was one,
  A village girl, they told us, who had borne
  An eighteen months strange illness, and had pined
  With such slow wasting that the hour of death
  Came welcome to her. We pursued our way
  To the house of mirth, and with that idle talk
  That passes o'er the mind and is forgot,
  We wore away the time. But it was eve
  When homewardly I went, and in the air
  Was that cool freshness, that discolouring shade
  That makes the eye turn inward. Then I heard
  Over the vale the heavy toll of death
  Sound slow; it made me think upon the dead,
  I questioned more and learnt her sorrowful tale.
  She bore unhusbanded a mother's name,
  And he who should have cherished her, far off
  Sail'd on the seas, self-exil'd from his home,
  For he was poor. Left thus, a wretched one,
  Scorn made a mock of her, and evil tongues
  Were busy with her name. She had one ill
  Heavier, neglect, forgetfulness from him
  Whom she had loved so dearly. Once he wrote,
  But only once that drop of comfort came
  To mingle with her cup of wretchedness;
  And when his parents had some tidings from him,
  There was no mention of poor Hannah there,
  Or 'twas the cold enquiry, bitterer
  Than silence. So she pined and pined away
  And for herself and baby toil'd and toil'd,
  Nor did she, even on her death bed, rest
  From labour, knitting with her outstretch'd arms
  Till she sunk with very weakness. Her old mother
  Omitted no kind office, and she work'd
  Hard, and with hardest working barely earn'd
  Enough to make life struggle and prolong
  The pains of grief and sickness. Thus she lay
  On the sick bed of poverty, so worn
  With her long suffering and that painful thought
  That at her heart lay rankling, and so weak,
  That she could make no effort to express
  Affection for her infant; and the child,
  Whose lisping love perhaps had solaced her
  With a strange infantine ingratitude
  Shunn'd her as one indifferent. She was past
  That anguish, for she felt her hour draw on,
  And 'twas her only comfoft now to think
  Upon the grave. "Poor girl!" her mother said,
  "Thou hast suffered much!" "aye mother! there is none
  "Can tell what I have suffered!" she replied,
  "But I shall soon be where the weary rest."
  And she did rest her soon, for it pleased God
  To take her to his mercy.