By thoughts on that great debt we owe, "MY SAVIOUR, I REPENT!" (1) (1) ["The Hall of Justice, or the story of the Gypsy Convict, is very nervous, very shocking, and very powerfully represented. It is written with very unusual power of language, and shows Mr. Crabbe to have great mastery over the tragic passions of pity and horror."―JEFFREY.] WOMAN! MR. LEDYARD, AS QUOTED BY MUNGO PARKE IN HIS TRAVELS INTO AFRICA "To a Woman I never addressed myself in the language of decency and "friendship, without receiving a decent and friendly answer. If I was "hungry or thirsty, wet or sick, they did not hesitate, like Men, to "perform a generous action: in so free and kind a manner did they " contribute to my relief, that if I was dry, I drank the sweetest draught; “and if hungry, I ate the coarsest morsel with a double relish." PLACE the white man on Afric's coast, And paint their very demons white: To soothe the woes they cannot feel, From all her stores, she bears a part, "What though so pale his haggard face, "So sunk and sad his looks," she cries; "And far unlike our nobler race, "With crisped locks and rolling eyes; "Yet misery marks him of our kind · "We see him lost, alone, afraid; "And pangs of body, griefs in mind, "Pronounce him man, and ask our aid "Perhaps in some far-distant shore, There are who in these forms delight; "Whose milky features please them more, "Than ours of jet thus burnish'd bright; "Of such may be his weeping wife, "Such children for their sire may call, "And if we spare his ebbing life, “Our kindness may preserve them all." Thus her compassion Woman shows, Beneath the line her acts are these; Nor the wide waste of Lapland-snows Can her warm flow of pity freeze : "From some sad land the stranger comes, "Where joys like ours are never found; "Let's soothe him in our happy homes, "Where freedom sits, with plenty crown'd. "'Tis good the fainting soul to cheer, "The powers above our Lapland bless By feeling those that we bestow!" Thus in extremes of cold and heat, Where wandering man may trace his kind; In Woman they compassion find; Man may the sterner virtues know, And bid life's fairer views appear: What comforts and delights us here; And care they soothe, and age they cheer. (1) (1) In Mr. Crabbe's note-book, which contains the original draught o "Woman," there occur also the following stanzas: — A weary Traveller walk'd his way, With grief and want and pain opprest: |