Lyrical Ballads (1798) — Old Man Travelling

OLD MAN TRAVELLING; ANIMAL TRANQUILLITY AND DECAY, A SKETCH.

The little hedge-row birds, That peck along the road, regard him not.

He travels on, and in his face, his step, His gait, is one expression; every limb, His look and bending figure, all bespeak A man who does not move with pain, but moves With thought--He is insensibly subdued To settled quiet: he is one by whom All effort seems forgotten, one to whom Long patience has such mild composure given, That patience now doth seem a thing, of which He hath no need.

He is by nature led To peace so perfect, that the young behold With envy, what the old man hardly feels.

--I asked him whither he was bound, and what The object of his journey; he replied “Sir!

I am going many miles to take “A last leave of my son, a mariner, “Who from a sea-fight has been brought to Falmouth, And there is dying in an hospital.

”