您可以在百度里搜索“The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb — Volume 4 艾草文学(www.321553.xyz)”查找最新章节！

　　WRITTEN ON CHRISTMAS DAY, 1797

　　I am a widow'd thing, now thou art gone!

　　Now thou art gone, my own familiar friend,

　　Companion, sister, help-mate, counsellor!

　　Alas! that honour'd mind, whose sweet reproof

　　And meekest wisdom in times past have smooth'd

　　The unfilial harshness of my foolish speech,

　　And made me loving to my parents old,

　　(Why is this so, ah God! why is this so?)

　　That honour'd mind become a fearful blank,

　　Her senses lock'd up, and herself kept out

　　From human sight or converse, while so many

　　Of the foolish sort are left to roam at large,

　　Doing all acts of folly, and sin, and shame?

　　Thy paths are mystery!

　　Yet I will not think,

　　Sweet friend, but we shall one day meet, and live

　　In quietness, and die so, fearing God.

　　Or if not, and these false suggestions be

　　A fit of the weak nature, loth to part

　　With what it lov'd so long, and held so dear;

　　If thou art to be taken, and I left

　　(More sinning, yet unpunish'd, save in thee),

　　It is the will of God, and we are clay

　　In the potter's hands; and, at the worst, are made

　　From absolute nothing, vessels of disgrace,

　　Till, his most righteous purpose wrought in us,

　　Our purified spirits find their perfect rest.

　　THE OLD FAMILIAR FACES

　　(January, 1798. Text of 1818)

　　I have had playmates, I have had companions,

　　In my days of childhood, in my joyful school-days,

　　All, all are gone, the old familiar faces.

　　I have been laughing, I have been carousing,

　　Drinking late, sitting late, with my bosom cronies,

　　All, all are gone, the old familiar faces.

　　I loved a love once, fairest among women;

　　Closed are her doors on me, I must not see her—

　　All, all are gone, the old familiar faces.

　　I have a friend, a kinder friend has no man;

　　Like an ingrate, I left my friend abruptly;

　　Left him, to muse on the old familiar faces.

　　Ghost-like, I paced round the haunts of my childhood.

　　Earth seemed a desart I was bound to traverse,

　　Seeking to find the old familiar faces.

　　Friend of my bosom, thou more than a brother,

　　Why wert not thou born in my father's dwelling?

　　So might we talk of the old familiar faces—

　　How some they have died, and some they have left me,

　　And some are taken from me; all are departed;

　　All, all are gone, the old familiar faces. The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb — Volume 4