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！

　　FROM CHARLES LLOYD'S POEMS ON THE DEATH OF PRISCILLA FARMER, 1796

　　THE GRANDAME

　　(Summer, 1796. Text of 1818)

　　On the green hill top,

　　Hard by the house of prayer, a modest roof,

　　And not distinguish'd from its neighbour-barn,

　　Save by a slender-tapering length of spire,

　　The Grandame sleeps. A plain stone barely tells

　　The name and date to the chance passenger.

　　For lowly born was she, and long had eat,

　　Well-earned, the bread of service:—her's was else

　　A mounting spirit, one that entertained

　　Scorn of base action, deed dishonorable,

　　Or aught unseemly. I remember well

　　Her reverend image: I remember, too,

　　With what a zeal she served her master's house;

　　And how the prattling tongue of garrulous age

　　Delighted to recount the oft-told tale

　　Or anecdote domestic. Wise she was,

　　And wondrous skilled in genealogies,

　　And could in apt and voluble terms discourse

　　Of births, of titles, and alliances;

　　Of marriages, and intermarriages;

　　Relationship remote, or near of kin;

　　Of friends offended, family disgraced—

　　Maiden high-born, but wayward, disobeying

　　Parental strict injunction, and regardless

　　Of unmixed blood, and ancestry remote,

　　Stooping to wed with one of low degree.

　　But these are not thy praises; and I wrong

　　Thy honor'd memory, recording chiefly

　　Things light or trivial. Better 'twere to tell,

　　How with a nobler zeal, and warmer love,

　　She served her heavenly master. I have seen

　　That reverend form bent down with age and pain

　　And rankling malady. Yet not for this

　　Ceased she to praise her maker, or withdrew

　　Her trust in him, her faith, and humble hope—

　　So meekly had she learn'd to bear her cross—

　　For she had studied patience in the school

　　Of Christ, much comfort she had thence derived,

　　And was a follower of the NAZARENE. The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb — Volume 4