Uploaded on June 16, 2011
…The neighb’ring poor at length began to speak
Of Abel’s ramblings — he’d been gone a week;
They knew not where, and little care they took
For one so friendless and so poor to look;
As last a stranger, in a pedler’s shed,
Beheld him hanging — he had long been dead.
He left a paper, penn’d at sundry times,
Intitled thus — “My Groanings and my Crimes!”
“I was a Christian man and none could lay
Aught to my charge; I walk’d the narrow way:
All then was simple faith, serene and pure,
My hope was steadfast and my prospects sure;
Then was I tried by want and sickness sore,
But these I clapp’d my shield of faith before,
And cares and wants and man’s rebukes I bore:
Alas! new foes assail’d me; I was vain,
They stung my pride and they confused my brain:
Oh! these deluders! with what glee they saw
Their simple dupe transgress the righteous law:
‘Twas joy to them to view that dreadful strife,
When faith and frailty warr’d for more than life,
So with their pleasures they beguiled the heart,
Then with their logic they allay’d the smart;
They proved (so thought I then) with reasons strong,
That no man’s feelings ever led him wrong:
And thus I went, as on the varnish’d ice,
The smooth career of unbelief and vice. …
— George Crabbe
excerpt from English Romantic Writers edited by David Perkins
6.16.2023: I especially enjoyed setting up the still life shots.