Charles Lamb.

1775-1834

587   The Old Familiar Faces

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 seem’d a desert 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.

588   Hester

WHEN maidens such as Hester die
Their place ye may not well supply,
Though ye among a thousand try
      With vain endeavour.

A month or more hath she been dead,
Yet cannot I by force be led
To think upon the wormy bed
         And her together.

A springy motion in her gait,
A rising step, did indicate
Of pride and joy no common rate,
         That flush’d her spirit:

I know not by what name beside
I shall it call: if ’twas not pride,
It was a joy to that allied,
         She did inherit.

Her parents held the Quaker rule,
Which doth the human feeling cool;
But she was train’d in Nature’s school;
         Nature had blest her.

A waking eye, a prying mind;
A heart that stirs, is hard to bind;
A hawk’s keen sight ye cannot blind;
      Ye could not Hester.

My sprightly neighbour! gone before
To that unknown and silent shore,
Shall we not meet, as heretofore,
      Some summer morning—

When from thy cheerful eyes a ray
Hath struck a bliss upon the day,
A bliss that would not go away,
        A sweet forewarning?

589   On an Infant dying as soon as born

I SAW where in the shroud did lurk
A curious frame of Nature’s work;
A floweret crush’d in the bud,
A nameless piece of Babyhood,
Was in her cradle-coffin lying;
Extinct, with scarce the sense of dying:
So soon to exchange the imprisoning womb
For darker closets of the tomb!
She did but ope