Ye mountains, on whose torrent-furrowed slopes,And bare and silent brows uplift to heaven,I envied oft the soul which fills your wastesOf pure and stern sublime, and still expanseUnbroken by the petty incidentsOf noisy life: Oh hear me once again!
Winds, upon whose racked eddies, far aloft,Above the murmur of the uneasy world,My thoughts in exultation held their way:Whose tremulous whispers through the rustling gladeWere once to me unearthly tones of love,Joy without object, wordless music, stealingThrough all my soul, until my pulse beat fastWith aimless hope, and unexpressed desire—Thou sea, who wast to me a prophet deepThrough all thy restless waves, and wasting shores,Of silent labour, and eternal change;First teacher of the dense immensityOf ever-stirring life, in thy strange formsOf fish, and shell, and worm, and oozy weed:To me alike thy frenzy and thy sleepHave been a deep and breathless joy: Oh hear!
Mountains, and winds, and waves, take back your child!Upon thy balmy bosom, Mother Nature,Where my young spirit dreamt its years away,Give me once more to nestle: I have strayedFar through another world, which is not thine.Through sunless cities, and the weary hauntsOf smoke-grimed labour, and foul revelryMy flagging wing has swept. A mateless bird’sMy pilgrimage has been; through sin, and doubt,And darkness, seeking love. Oh hear me, Nature!Receive me once again: but not alone;No more alone, Great Mother! I have broughtOne who has wandered, yet not sinned, like me.Upon thy lap, twin children, let us lie;And in the light of thine immortal eyesLet our souls mingle, till The Father callsTo some eternal home the charge He gives thee.
Cambridge, 1841.
Twin stars, aloft in ether clear,Around each other roll alway,Within one common atmosphereOf their own mutual light and day.
And myriad happy eyes are bentUpon their changeless love alway;As, strengthened by their one intent,They pour the flood of life and day.
So we through this world’s waning nightMay, hand in hand, pursue our way;Shed round us order, love, and light,And shine unto the perfect day.
1842.
Underneath their eider-robeRusset swede and golden globe,Feathered carrot, burrowing deep,Steadfast wait in charmèd sleep;Treasure-houses wherein lie,Locked by angels’ alchemy,Milk and hair, and blood, and bone,Children of the barren stone;Children of the flaming Air,With his blue eye keen and bare,Spirit-peopled smiling downOn frozen field and toiling town—Toiling town that will not heedGod His voice for rage and greed;Frozen fields that surpliced lie,Gazing patient at the sky;Like some marble carven nun,With folded hands when work is done,Who mute upon her tomb doth pray,Till the resurrection day.
Eversley, 1845.
Jesus, He loves one and all,Jesus, He loves children small,Their souls are waiting round His feetOn high, before His mercy-seat.
While He wandered here belowChildren small to Him did go,At His feet they knelt and prayed,On their heads His hands He laid.
Came a Spirit on them then,Better than of mighty men,A Spirit faithful, pure and mild,A Spirit fit for king and child.
Oh! that Spirit give to me,Jesu Lord, where’er I be!
1847.
Airly Beacon, Airly Beacon;Oh the pleasant sight to seeShires and towns from Airly Beacon,While my love climbed up to me!
Airly Beacon, Airly Beacon;Oh the happy hours we layDeep in fern on Airly Beacon,Courting through the summer’s day!
Airly Beacon, Airly Beacon;Oh the weary haunt for me,All alone on Airly Beacon,With his baby on my knee!
1847.
She lay among the myrtles on the cliff;Above her glared the noon; beneath, the sea.Upon the white horizon Atho’s peakWeltered in burning haze; all airs were dead;The cicale slept among the tamarisk’s hair;The birds sat dumb and drooping. Far belowThe lazy sea-weed glistened in the sun;The lazy sea-fowl dried their steaming wings;The lazy swell crept whispering up the ledge,And sank again. Great Pan was laid to rest;And Mother Earth watched by him as he slept,And hushed her myriad children for a while.She lay among the myrtles on the cliff;And sighed for sleep, for sleep that would not hear,But left her tossing still; for night and dayA mighty hunger yearned within her heart,Till all her veins ran fever; and her cheek,Her long thin hands, and ivory-channelled feet,Were wasted with the wasting of her soul.Then peevishly she flung her on her face,And hid her eyeballs from the blinding glare,And fingered at the grass, and tried to coolHer crisp hot lips against the crisp hot sward:And then she raised her head, and upward castWild looks from homeless eyes, whose liquid lightGleamed out between deep folds of blue-black hair,As gleam twin lakes between the purple peaksOf deep Parnassus, at the mournful moon.Beside her lay her lyre. She snatched the shell,And waked wild music from its silver strings;Then tossed it sadly by.—‘Ah, hush!’ she cries;‘Dead offspring of the tortoise and the mine!Why mock my discords with thine harmonies?Although a thrice-Olympian lot be thine,Only to echo back in every toneThe moods of nobler natures than thine own.’
Eversley, 1847FromYeast.
The merry brown hares came leapingOver the crest of the hill,Where the clover and corn lay sleepingUnder the moonlight still.
Leaping late and early,Till under their bite and their treadThe swedes and the wheat and the barleyLay cankered and trampled and dead.
A poacher’s widow sat sighingOn the side of the white chalk bank,Where under the gloomy fir-woodsOne spot in the ley throve rank.
She watched a long tuft of clover,Where rabbit or hare never ran;For its black sour haulm covered overThe blood of a murdered man.
She thought of the dark plantation,And the hares, and her husband’s blood,And the voice of her indignationRose up to the throne of God.
‘I am long past wailing and whining—I have wept too much in my life:I’ve had twenty years of piningAs an English labourer’s wife.
‘A labourer in Christian England,Where they cant of a Saviour’s name,And yet waste men’s lives like the vermin’sFor a few more brace of game.
‘There’s blood on your new foreign shrubs, squire,There’s blood on your pointer’s feet;There’s blood on the game you sell, squire,And there’s blood on the game you eat.
‘You have sold the labouring-man, squire,Body and soul to shame,To pay for your seat in the House, squire,And to pay for the feed of your game.
‘You made him a poacher yourself, squire,When you’d give neither work nor meat,And your barley-fed hares robbed the gardenAt our starving children’s feet;
‘When, packed in one reeking chamber,Man, maid, mother, and little ones lay;While the rain pattered in on the rotting bride-bed,And the walls let in the day.
‘When we lay in the burning feverOn the mud of the cold clay floor,Till you parted us all for three months, squire,At the dreary workhouse door.
‘We quarrelled like brutes, and who wonders?What self-respect could we keep,Worse housed than your hacks and your pointers,Worse fed than your hogs and your sheep?
‘Our daughters with base-born babiesHave wandered away in their shame,If your misses had slept, squire, where they did,Your misses might do the same.
‘Can your lady patch hearts that are breakingWith handfuls of coals and rice,Or by dealing out flannel and sheetingA little below cost price?
‘You may tire of the jail and the workhouse,And take to allotments and schools,But you’ve run up a debt that will neverBe paid us by penny-club rules.
‘In the season of shame and sadness,In the dark and dreary day,When scrofula, gout, and madnessAre eating your race away;
‘When to kennels and liveried varletsYou have cast your daughter’s bread,And, worn out with liquor and harlots,Your heir at your feet lies dead;
‘When your youngest, the mealy-mouthed rector,Lets your soul rot asleep to the grave,You will find in your God the protectorOf the freeman you fancied your slave.’
She looked at the tuft of clover,And wept till her heart grew light;And at last, when her passion was over,Went wandering into the night.
But the merry brown hares came leapingOver the uplands still,Where the clover and corn lay sleepingOn the side of the white chalk hill.
Eversley, 1847.FromYeast.
Oh, forth she went like a braw, braw brideTo meet her winsome groom,When she was aware of twa bonny birdsSat biggin’ in the broom.
The tane it built with the green, green moss,But and the bents sae fine,And the tither wi’ a lock o’ lady’s hairLinked up wi’ siller twine.
‘O whaur gat ye the green, green moss,O whaur the bents sae fine?And whaur gat ye the bonny broun hairThat ance was tress o’ mine?’
‘We gat the moss fra’ the elditch aile,The bents fra’ the whinny muir,And a fause knight threw us the bonny broun hair,To please his braw new fere.’
‘Gae pull, gae pull the simmer leaves,And strew them saft o’er me;My token’s tint, my love is fause,I’ll lay me doon and dee.’
1847.
A gay young knight in Burley stood,Beside him pawed his steed so good,His hands he wrung as he were woodWith waiting for his love O!
‘Oh, will she come, or will she stay,Or will she waste the weary dayWith fools who wish her far away,And hate her for her love O?’
But by there came a mighty boar,His jowl and tushes red with gore,And on his curled snout he boreA bracelet rich and rare O!
The knight he shrieked, he ran, he flew,He searched the wild wood through and through,But found nought save a mantle blue,Low rolled within the brake O!
He twined the wild briar, red and white,Upon his head the garland dight,The green leaves withered black as night,And burnt into his brain O!
A fire blazed up within his breast,He mounted on an aimless quest,He laid his virgin lance in rest,And through the forest drove O!
By Rhinefield and by Osmondsleigh,Through leat and furze brake fast drove he,Until he saw the homeless sea,That called with all its waves O!
He laughed aloud to hear the roar,And rushed his horse adown the shore,The deep surge rolled him o’er and o’er,And swept him down the tide O!
New Forest,July12, 1847.
Oh she tripped over Ocknell plain,And down by Bradley Water;And the fairest maid on the forest sideWas Jane, the keeper’s daughter.
She went and went through the broad gray lawnsAs down the red sun sank,And chill as the scent of a new-made graveThe mist smelt cold and dank.
‘A token, a token!’ that fair maid cried,‘A token that bodes me sorrow;For they that smell the grave by nightWill see the corpse to-morrow.
‘My own true love in Burley WalkDoes hunt to-night, I fear;And if he meet my father stern,His game may cost him dear.
‘Ah, here’s a curse on hare and grouse,A curse on hart and hind;And a health to the squire in all England,Leaves never a head behind.’
Her true love shot a mighty hartAmong the standing rye,When on him leapt that keeper oldFrom the fern where he did lie.
The forest laws were sharp and stern,The forest blood was keen;They lashed together for life and deathBeneath the hollies green.
The metal good and the walnut woodDid soon in flinders flee;They tost the orts to south and north,And grappled knee to knee.
They wrestled up, they wrestled down,They wrestled still and sore;Beneath their feet the myrtle sweetWas stamped to mud and gore.
Ah, cold pale moon, thou cruel pale moon,That starest with never a frownOn all the grim and the ghastly thingsThat are wrought in thorpe and town:
And yet, cold pale moon, thou cruel pale moon,That night hadst never the graceTo lighten two dying Christian menTo see one another’s face.
They wrestled up, they wrestled down,They wrestled sore and still,The fiend who blinds the eyes of menThat night he had his will.
Like stags full spent, among the bentThey dropped a while to rest;When the young man drove his saying knifeDeep in the old man’s breast.
The old man drove his gunstock downUpon the young man’s head;And side by side, by the water brown,Those yeomen twain lay dead.
They dug three graves in Lyndhurst yard;They dug them side by side;Two yeomen lie there, and a maiden fairA widow and never a bride.
In the New Forest, 1847.
The King was drinking in Malwood Hall,There came in a monk before them all:He thrust by squire, he thrust by knight,Stood over against the dais aright;And, ‘The word of the Lord, thou cruel Red King,The word of the Lord to thee I bring.A grimly sweven I dreamt yestreen;I saw thee lie under the hollins green,And through thine heart an arrow keen;And out of thy body a smoke did rise,Which smirched the sunshine out of the skies:So if thou God’s anointed beI rede thee unto thy soul thou see.For mitre and pall thou hast y-sold,False knight to Christ, for gain and gold;And for this thy forest were digged down all,Steading and hamlet and churches tall;And Christés poor were ousten forth,To beg their bread from south to north.So tarry at home, and fast and pray,Lest fiends hunt thee in the judgment-day.’
The monk he vanished where he stood;King William sterte up wroth and wood;Quod he, ‘Fools’ wits will jump together;The Hampshire ale and the thunder weatherHave turned the brains for us both, I think;And monks are curst when they fall to drink.A lothly sweven I dreamt last night,How there hoved anigh me a griesly knight,Did smite me down to the pit of hell;I shrieked and woke, so fast I fell.There’s Tyrrel as sour as I, perdie,So he of you all shall hunt with me;A grimly brace for a hart to see.’
The Red King down from Malwood came;His heart with wine was all aflame,His eyne were shotten, red as blood,He rated and swore, wherever he rode.They roused a hart, that grimly brace,A hart of ten, a hart of grease,Fled over against the kingés place.The sun it blinded the kingés ee,A fathom behind his hocks shot he:‘Shoot thou,’ quod he, ‘in the fiendés name,To lose such a quarry were seven years’ shame.’And he hove up his hand to mark the game.Tyrrel he shot full light, God wot;For whether the saints they swerved the shot,‘Or whether by treason, men knowen not,But under the arm, in a secret part,The iron fled through the kingés heart.The turf it squelched where the Red King fell;And the fiends they carried his soul to hell,Quod ‘His master’s name it hath sped him well.’
Tyrrel he smiled full grim that day,Quod ‘Shooting of kings is no bairns’ play;’And he smote in the spurs, and fled fast away.As he pricked along by Fritham plain,The green tufts flew behind like rain;The waters were out, and over the sward:He swam his horse like a stalwart lord:Men clepen that water Tyrrel’s ford.By Rhinefield and by Osmondsleigh,Through glade and furze brake fast drove he,Until he heard the roaring sea;Quod he, ‘Those gay waves they call me.’By Mary’s grace a seely boatOn Christchurch bar did lie afloat;He gave the shipmen mark and groat,To ferry him over to Normandie,And there he fell to sanctuarie;God send his soul all bliss to see.
And fend our princes every one,From foul mishap and trahison;But kings that harrow Christian menShall England never bide again.
In the New Forest, 1847,
Oh, I wadna be a yeoman, mither, to follow my father’s trade,To bow my back in miry banks, at pleugh and hoe and spade.Stinting wife, and bairns, and kye, to fat some courtier lord,—Let them die o’ rent wha like, mither, and I’ll die by sword.
Nor I wadna be a clerk, mither, to bide aye ben,Scrabbling ower the sheets o’ parchment with a weary weary pen;Looking through the lang stane windows at a narrow strip o’ sky,Like a laverock in a withy cage, until I pine away and die.
Nor I wadna be a merchant, mither, in his lang furred gown,Trailing strings o’ footsore horses through the noisy dusty town;Louting low to knights and ladies, fumbling o’er his wares,Telling lies, and scraping siller, heaping cares on cares.
Nor I wadna be a soldier, mither, to dice wi’ ruffian bands,Pining weary months in castles, looking over wasted lands.Smoking byres, and shrieking women, and the grewsome sights o’ war—There’s blood on my hand eneugh, mither; it’s ill to make it mair.
If I had married a wife, mither, I might ha’ been douce and still,And sat at hame by the ingle side to crack and laugh my fill;Sat at hame wi’ the woman I looed, and wi’ bairnies at my knee:But death is bauld, and age is cauld, and luve’s no for me.
For when first I stirred in your side, mither, ye ken full wellHow you lay all night up among the deer out on the open fell;And so it was that I won the heart to wander far and near,Caring neither for land nor lassie, but the bonnie dun deer.
Yet I am not a losel and idle, mither, nor a thief that steals;I do but hunt God’s cattle, upon God’s ain hills;For no man buys and sells the deer, and the bonnie fells are freeTo a belted knight with hawk on hand, and a gangrel loon like me.
So I’m aff and away to the muirs, mither, to hunt the deer,Ranging far frae frowning faces, and the douce folk here;Crawling up through burn and bracken, louping down the screes,Looking out frae craig and headland, drinking up the simmer breeze.
Oh, the wafts o’ heather honey, and the music o’ the brae,As I watch the great harts feeding, nearer, nearer a’ the day.Oh, to hark the eagle screaming, sweeping, ringing round the sky—That’s a bonnier life than stumbling ower the muck to colt and kye.
And when I’m taen and hangit, mither, a brittling o’ my deer,Ye’ll no leave your bairn to the corbie craws, to dangle in the air;But ye’ll send up my twa douce brethren, and ye’ll steal me frae the tree,And bury me up on the brown brown muirs, where I aye looed to be.
Ye’ll bury me ’twixt the brae and the burn, in a glen far away,Where I may hear the heathcock craw, and the great harts bray;And gin my ghaist can walk, mither, I’ll go glowering at the sky,The livelong night on the black hill sides where the dun deer lie.
In the New Forest, 1847.
There sits a bird on every tree;Sing heigh-ho!There sits a bird on every tree,And courts his love as I do thee;Sing heigh-ho, and heigh-ho!Young maids must marry.
There grows a flower on every bough;Sing heigh-ho!There grows a flower on every bough,Its petals kiss—I’ll show you how:Sing heigh-ho, and heigh-ho!Young maids must marry.
From sea to stream the salmon roam;Sing heigh-ho!From sea to stream the salmon roam;Each finds a mate, and leads her home;Sing heigh-ho, and heigh-ho!Young maids must marry.
The sun’s a bridegroom, earth a bride;Sing heigh-ho!They court from morn till eventide:The earth shall pass, but love abide.Sing heigh-ho, and heigh-ho!Young maids must marry.
Eversley, 1847.
Dreary East winds howling o’er us;Clay-lands knee-deep spread before us;Mire and ice and snow and sleet;Aching backs and frozen feet;Knees which reel as marches quicken,Ranks which thin as corpses thicken;While with carrion birds we eat,Calling puddle-water sweet,As we pledge the health of our general, who fares as rough as we:What can daunt us, what can turn us, led to death by such as he?
Eversley, 1848.
The merry merry lark was up and singing,And the hare was out and feeding on the lea;And the merry merry bells below were ringing,When my child’s laugh rang through me.
Now the hare is snared and dead beside the snow-yard,And the lark beside the dreary winter sea;And the baby in his cradle in the churchyardSleeps sound till the bell brings me.
Eversley, 1848.
A floating, a floatingAcross the sleeping sea,All night I heard a singing birdUpon the topmost tree.
‘Oh came you off the isles of Greece,Or off the banks of Seine;Or off some tree in forests free,Which fringe the western main?’
‘I came not off the old worldNor yet from off the new—But I am one of the birds of GodWhich sing the whole night through.’
‘Oh sing, and wake the dawning—Oh whistle for the wind;The night is long, the current strong,My boat it lags behind.’
‘The current sweeps the old world,The current sweeps the new;The wind will blow, the dawn will glowEre thou hast sailed them through.’
Eversley, 1848.
Wild wild wind, wilt thou never cease thy sighing?Dark dark night, wilt thou never wear away?Cold cold church, in thy death sleep lying,The Lent is past, thy Passion here, but not thine Easter-day.
Peace, faint heart, though the night be dark and sighing;Rest, fair corpse, where thy Lord himself hath lain.Weep, dear Lord, above thy bride low lying;Thy tears shall wake her frozen limbs to life and health again.
Eversley, 1848.
The church bells were ringing, the devil sat singingOn the stump of a rotting old tree;‘Oh faith it grows cold, and the creeds they grow old,And the world is nigh ready for me.’
The bells went on ringing, a spirit came singing,And smiled as he crumbled the tree;‘Yon wood does but perish new seedlings to cherish,And the world is too live yet for thee.’
Eversley, 1848.
Early in spring time, on raw and windy mornings,Beneath the freezing house-eaves I heard the starlings sing—‘Ah dreary March month, is this then a time for building wearily?Sad, sad, to think that the year is but begun.’
Late in the autumn, on still and cloudless evenings,Among the golden reed-beds I heard the starlings sing—‘Ah that sweet March month, when we and our mates were courting merrily;Sad, sad, to think that the year is all but done.’
Eversley, 1848.
See how the autumn leaves float by decaying,Down the wild swirls of the rain-swollen stream.So fleet the works of men, back to their earth again;Ancient and holy things fade like a dream.
Nay! see the spring-blossoms steal forth a-maying,Clothing with tender hues orchard and glen;So, though old forms pass by, ne’er shall their spirit die,Look! England’s bare boughs show green leaf again.
Eversley, 1848.
‘Watchman, what of the night?’‘The stars are out in the sky;And the merry round moon will be rising soon,For us to go sailing by.’
‘Watchman, what of the night?’‘The tide flows in from the sea;There’s water to float a little cockboatWill carry such fishers as we.’
‘Watchman, what of the night?’‘The night is a fruitful time;When to many a pair are born children fair,To be christened at morning chime.’
1849.
Who will say the world is dying?Who will say our prime is past?Sparks from Heaven, within us lying,Flash, and will flash till the last.Fools! who fancy Christ mistaken;Man a tool to buy and sell;Earth a failure, God-forsaken,Anteroom of Hell.
Still the race of Hero-spiritsPass the lamp from hand to hand;Age from age the Words inherits—‘Wife, and Child, and Fatherland.’Still the youthful hunter gathersFiery joy from wold and wood;He will dare as dared his fathersGive him cause as good.
While a slave bewails his fetters;While an orphan pleads in vain;While an infant lisps his letters,Heir of all the age’s gain;While a lip grows ripe for kissing;While a moan from man is wrung;Know, by every want and blessing,That the world is young.
1849.
‘O Mary, go and call the cattle home,And call the cattle home,And call the cattle homeAcross the sands of Dee;’The western wind was wild and dank with foam,And all alone went she.
The western tide crept up along the sand,And o’er and o’er the sand,And round and round the sand,As far as eye could see.The rolling mist came down and hid the land:And never home came she.
‘Oh! is it weed, or fish, or floating hair—A tress of golden hair,A drownèd maiden’s hairAbove the nets at sea?Was never salmon yet that shone so fairAmong the stakes on Dee.’
They rowed her in across the rolling foam,The cruel crawling foam,The cruel hungry foam,To her grave beside the sea:But still the boatmen hear her call the cattle homeAcross the sands of Dee.
Eversley, 1849.
How sleeps yon rock, whose half-day’s bath is done.With broad blight side beneath the broad bright sun,Like sea-nymph tired, on cushioned mosses sleeping.Yet, nearer drawn, beneath her purple tressesFrom drooping brows we find her slowly weeping.So many a wife for cruel man’s caressesMust inly pine and pine, yet outward bearA gallant front to this world’s gaudy glare.
Ilfracombe, 1849.
Wearily stretches the sand to the surge, and the surge to the cloudland;Wearily onward I ride, watching the water alone.Not as of old, like Homeric Achilles, κυδει yαιων,Joyous knight-errant of God, thirsting for labour and strife;No more on magical steed borne free through the regions of ether,But, like the hack which I ride, selling my sinew for gold.Fruit-bearing autumn is gone; let the sad quiet winter hang o’er me—What were the spring to a soul laden with sorrow and shame?Blossoms would fret me with beauty; my heart has no time to bepraise them;Gray rock, bough, surge, cloud, waken no yearning within.Sing not, thou sky-lark above! even angels pass hushed by the weeper.Scream on, ye sea-fowl! my heart echoes your desolate cry.Sweep the dry sand on, thou wild wind, to drift o’er the shell and the sea-weed;Sea-weed and shell, like my dreams, swept down the pitiless tide.Just is the wave which uptore us; ’tis Nature’s own law which condemns us;Woe to the weak who, in pride, build on the faith of the sand!Joy to the oak of the mountain: he trusts to the might of the rock-clefts;Deeply he mines, and in peace feeds on the wealth of the stone.
Morte Sands, Devonshire,February1849.
I cannot tell what you say, green leaves,I cannot tell what you say:But I know that there is a spirit in you,And a word in you this day.
I cannot tell what you say, rosy rocks,I cannot tell what you say:But I know that there is a spirit in you,And a word in you this day.
I cannot tell what you say, brown streams,I cannot tell what you say:But I know that in you too a spirit doth live,And a word doth speak this day.
‘Oh green is the colour of faith and truth,And rose the colour of love and youth,And brown of the fruitful clay.Sweet Earth is faithful, and fruitful, and young,And her bridal day shall come ere long,And you shall know what the rocks and the streamsAnd the whispering woodlands say.’
Drew’s Teignton, Dartmoor,July31, 1849.
Forward! Hark forward’s the cry!One more fence and we’re out on the open,So to us at once, if you want to live near us!Hark to them, ride to them, beauties! as on they go,Leaping and sweeping away in the vale below!Cowards and bunglers, whose heart or whose eye is slow,Find themselves staring alone.
So the great cause flashes by;Nearer and clearer its purposes open,While louder and prouder the world-echoes cheer us:Gentlemen sportsmen, you ought to live up to us,Lead us, and lift us, and hallo our game to us—We cannot call the hounds off, and no shame to us—Don’t be left staring alone!
Eversley, 1849.
Weep, weep, weep and weep,For pauper, dolt, and slave!Hark! from wasted moor and fen,Feverous alley, stifling den,Swells the wail of Saxon men—Work! or the grave!
Down, down, down and down,With idler, knave, and tyrant!Why for sluggards cark and moil?He that will not live by toilHas no right on English soil!God’s word’s our warrant!
Up, up, up and up!Face your game and play it!The night is past, behold the sun!The idols fall, the lie is done!The Judge is set, the doom begun!Who shall stay it?
On Torridge,May1849.
The Day of the Lord is at hand, at hand:Its storms roll up the sky:The nations sleep starving on heaps of gold;All dreamers toss and sigh;The night is darkest before the morn;When the pain is sorest the child is born,And the Day of the Lord at hand.
Gather you, gather you, angels of God—Freedom, and Mercy, and Truth;Come! for the Earth is grown coward and old,Come down, and renew us her youth.Wisdom, Self-Sacrifice, Daring, and Love,Haste to the battle-field, stoop from above,To the Day of the Lord at hand.
Gather you, gather you, hounds of hell—Famine, and Plague, and War;Idleness, Bigotry, Cant, and Misrule,Gather, and fall in the snare!Hireling and Mammonite, Bigot and Knave,Crawl to the battle-field, sneak to your grave,In the Day of the Lord at hand.
Who would sit down and sigh for a lost age of gold,While the Lord of all ages is here?True hearts will leap up at the trumpet of God,And those who can suffer, can dare.Each old age of gold was an iron age too,And the meekest of saints may find stern work to do,In the Day of the Lord at hand.
On the Torridge, Devonshire,September10, 1849.
It chanced upon the merry merry Christmas eve,I went sighing past the church across the moorland dreary—‘Oh! never sin and want and woe this earth will leave,And the bells but mock the wailing round, they sing so cheery.How long, O Lord! how long before Thou come again?Still in cellar, and in garret, and on moorland drearyThe orphans moan, and widows weep, and poor men toil in vain,Till earth is sick of hope deferred, though Christmas bells be cheery.’
Then arose a joyous clamour from the wild-fowl on the mere,Beneath the stars, across the snow, like clear bells ringing,And a voice within cried—‘Listen!—Christmas carols even here!Though thou be dumb, yet o’er their work the stars and snows are singing.Blind! I live, I love, I reign; and all the nations throughWith the thunder of my judgments even now are ringing.Do thou fulfil thy work but as yon wild-fowl do,Thou wilt heed no less the wailing, yet hear through it angels singing.’
Eversley, 1849.
It was an hairy oubit, sae proud he crept alang,A feckless hairy oubit, and merrily he sang—‘My Minnie bad me bide at hame until I won my wings;I show her soon my soul’s aboon the warks o’ creeping things.’
This feckless hairy oubit cam’ hirpling by the linn,A swirl o’ wind cam’ doun the glen, and blew that oubit in:Oh when he took the water, the saumon fry they rose,And tigg’d him a’ to pieces sma’, by head and tail and toes.
Tak’ warning then, young poets a’, by this poor oubit’s shame;Though Pegasus may nicher loud, keep Pegasus at hame.Oh haud your hands frae inkhorns, though a’ the Muses woo;For critics lie, like saumon fry, to mak’ their meals o’ you.
Eversley, 1851.
Three fishers went sailing away to the West,Away to the West as the sun went down;Each thought on the woman who loved him the best,And the children stood watching them out of the town;For men must work, and women must weep,And there’s little to earn, and many to keep,Though the harbour bar be moaning.
Three wives sat up in the lighthouse tower,And they trimmed the lamps as the sun went down;They looked at the squall, and they looked at the shower,And the night-rack came rolling up ragged and brown.But men must work, and women must weep,Though storms be sudden, and waters deep,And the harbour bar be moaning.
Three corpses lay out on the shining sandsIn the morning gleam as the tide went down,And the women are weeping and wringing their handsFor those who will never come home to the town;For men must work, and women must weep,And the sooner it’s over, the sooner to sleep;And good-bye to the bar and its moaning.
Eversley,June25, 1851.