Читать книгу The Collected Works of Charles Lamb and Mary Lamb - Charles Lamb - Страница 109

——Infant hands

Trail the long rake; or, with the fragrant load

O'er-charged, amid the kind oppression roll.

Scott

"Kind oppression" is a phrase of that sort, which one scarcely knows whether to blame or praise: it consists of two words, directly opposite in their signification; and yet, perhaps, no phrase whatever could have better conveyed the idea of an easy uninjurious weight—

Ritson

—and yet he does not know whether to blame or praise it!

Though here revenge and pride withheld his praise,

No wrongs shall reach him through his future days;

The rising ages shall redeem his name,

And nations read him into lasting fame.

In his defects untaught, his labour'd page

Shall the slow gratitude of Time engage.

Perhaps some story of his pitied woe,

Mix'd in faint shades, may with his memory go,

To touch fraternity with generous shame,

And backward cast an unavailing blame

On times too cold to taste his strength of art,

Yet warm contemners of too weak a heart.

Rest in thy dust, contented with thy lot,

Thy good remember'd, and thy bad forgot.