A SUMMER DAY.By Thomas Aird.
Morning.Dear little Isle of ours! your very clouds,Ranged in the east and battlemented black,White flock of zenith, or, with stormy glory,Tumbling tumultuous o’er the western hills,Lend power and beauty to your pictured face,Relieved and deepened in its light and shade,Varied of dale and mountain, pleasing stillThrough all the seasons, as they come and go,—Blue airy Summer, Autumn brown and grave,Gnarled sapless Winter, and clear glinting Spring.Mine be the cottage, large enough for use,Yet fully occupied, and cheerful thus.Desolate he who, with his means abridged,And wants reduced, yet pride of propertyStill unimpaired, dwells in a narrow flank;Of his ancestral house, gloomily vastBeyond his need,—dwells with the faded ghostOf former greatness. There the bellied spider,That works in cool and silent palaces,Has halls his own. The labyrinthine roomsSeem haunted all. Mysterious laden airsMove the dim tapestries drearily. And shapesSpectral at hollow midnight beckoning glideDown the far corridors, and faint away.Up with the summer sun! Earlier at times,And see gray brindled dawn come up before him;There’s natural health, there’s moral healing inThe hour so naked clear, so dewy cool!But oft I wish a chamber in the blackCastle of Indolence, far in, where sparkOf prying light ne’er comes, nor sound of cockIs heard, nor the long howl of houseless cur,Nor clock, nor shrill-winged gnat, nor buzzing flyThat, by the snoring member undeterred,Aye settles on your nose’s tickled tipTormentingly. Deep in that charmèd restLaid, I could sleep the weary world away,Months at a time—so listless fancy thinks.Oh! curse of sleeplessness! Haggard and pale,The tyrant Nero, see him from his bedWandering about, haunting the long dim halls,And silent stairs, at midnight, startled oftAt his own footsteps, like a guilty thingSharp turning round aghast. The palace sleeps,And all the city sleeps, all save its lord.Then looks he to the windows of the east,Wearily watching for the morning light,That comes not at his will. Down on his bedHe flings himself again. His eyeballs ache;His temples throb; his pillow’s hot and hard;And through his dried brain thoughts and feelings drift,Tumultuous, unrestrained, carrying his soulOn the high fever’s surge. The imperial worldFor one short dewy hour of healing sleep!Worlds cannot buy the blessing. Up he reels,And staggers forth. Slow-coming day at lengthHas found him thus. Its living busy forms,Its turms, its senators, its gorgeous guests,Bowing in homage from barbaric isles,Its scenes, its duties are to him a strangePhantasmagoria: Through its ghastly lightWildered he lives. To feel and be assuredHe yet has hold on being, with the drugsOf monstrous pleasures, cruelty and lust,He drugs his spirit; ever longing stillFor the soft hour of eve, if sleep may comeAfter another day has worn him out.But images of black, bed-fellows strange,Lie down with him; drawing his curtain back,Unearthly shapes, and unimagined faces,Look in upon him, near down on his eyes,Nearer and nearer still, till they are forcedTo wink beneath the infliction, like a weightOf actual pressure, solid, heavy, felt.But winking hard, a thousand coloured motesBegin to dance confused, and central stars,And spots of light, welling and widening outIn rings concentric, peopling all the blindBlack vacancy before his burning balls.But soon they change to leering antic shapes,And dread-suggesting fiends. Dim, far away,Long dripping corpses, swaying in the waves,Slowly cast up, arise; gashed, gory throats,And headless trunks of men, are nearer seen,And every form of tragic butchery—The myriad victims of his power abusedBy sea and land. To give their hideousnessDue light, a ceiling of clear molten fire,Figured with sprawling imps, begins to glowHot overhead, casting a brazen lightDown on the murdered crew. All bent on him,Near, nearer still, they swarm, they crowd, they press;And round and round, and through and through the rout,The naked Pleasures, knit with demons, dance.Wild whirls his brain anew. This night is asThe last, and far more terrible. Guilt thus,And sleeplessness, more than perpetuateEach other—dreadful lineage! Let us hope,For human nature, that the man was mad.Up from your blameless sleep, go forth and meetThe glistening morn, over the smoking lawnSpangled, by briery balks, and brambled lanes,Where blows the dog-rose, and the honey-suckleHangs o’er the heavy hedge its trailing sheafOf stems and leaves, tendrils and clasping rings,Cold dews, and bugle blooms, and honey smells,And wild bees swinging as they murmur there.The speckled thrush, startled from off the thorn,Shakes down the crystal drops. With spurring haste,The rabbit scuds across the grassy path;Pauses a moment—with its form and earsArrect to listen; then, with glimpse of white,Springs through the hedge into the ferny brake.Or taste the freshness of the pastoral hillsOn such a morn: Light scarfs of thinning mistIn graceful lingerings round their shoulders hang;New-washed and white, the sheep go nibbling upThe high green slopes; a hundred gurgling rills,Sparkling with foam-bells, to your very heartSend their delicious coolness; hark! again,The cuckoo somewhere in the sunny skirtsOf yonder patch of the old natural woods;With sudden iron croak, clear o’er the graySummit, o’erhanging you, with levell’d flight,The raven shoots into the deep blue air.Lo! in the confluence of the mountain glens,The small gray ruin of an ancient kirk.’Twas the first kirk, so faithful reverence tells,Of Scotland’s Reformation: And it drew,Now as before, from all the hills aroundThe worshippers; till, in a richer vale,To suit the populous hamlet rising there,A larger, nearer parish church was built.Thus was the old one left. But there it stands,And there will stand till the slow tooth of TimeNibble it all away; for it is fencedCompletely round, not with just awe alone,But superstitious fears, the abuse of aweIn simple minds: Strange judgments, so they say,Have fallen on those who once or twice have daredTo lay their hands upon its holy stonesFor secular uses, and remove its bell.With such excess of love—we’ll blame it not—Does Scotland love her Church. Be it so stillAnd be its emblem still the Burning Bush!Bush of the wilderness! See how the flamesBicker and burn around it; but a lowSoft breath of the great Spirit of SalvationBlows gracious by, and the dear little Bush,The desert Bush, in every freshened leafUncurled, unsinged in every flowery bud,Fragrant with heavenly dews, and dropping balsamsGood for the hurt soul’s healing, waves and rustles,Even in the very heart of the red burning,In livelier green and fairer blossoming.Earth sends her soft warm incense up to heaven;The birds their matins sing. Joining the hymn,The tremulous voice of psalms from human lipsIs heard in the free air. You wonder where,And who the worshippers. Behold them now,Down in the grassy hollow lowly seated,Close by the mountain burn—an old gray man,His head uncovered, and the Book of lifeSpread on his knee, a female by his side,His aged wife, both beggars by their garb,With frail cracked voices, yet with hearts attunedTo the immortal harmonies of faith,And hope, and love, in the green wildernessPraising the Lord their God—a touching sight!High in the Heavenly House not made with hands,The archangels sing, angels, and saints in white,Striking their golden harps before the Throne;But, in the pauses of the symphonyA voice comes up from Earth, the simple psalmOf those old beggars, heard by the Ear of GodWith more acceptance than hosannahs sungIn blissful jubilee. ’Tis hard to thinkThe people of the Lord must beg their bread;Yet happy they who, poor as this old twainOn earth, like them, have laid fast titled holdUpon the treasures of Eternity!Her nest is here: But ah! the cunning thing,See where our White-throat, like the partridge, feignsA broken wing, thick fluttering o’er the ground,And tumbling oft, to draw you from her broodWithin the bush. Now that’s a lie, my birdie!Your wing’s not broken; but we’ll grant you this,—The lie’s a white one, white as your own throat.Yet how should He who is the Truth itself,And whose unquestioned prompting instinct is,Implant deceit within your little breast,And make you act it, even to save your young?The whole creation groans for man, for sin,And death its consequence: We’re changed to youIn our relations, birdie; as a partOf that primeval ill, we rob your nest.To meet this change, and in God’s own permissionOf moral wrong, was it, that guile was givenEven to the truest instinct of your love;And your deceit is our reflected sin?Subtle philosopher, or sound divine,’Tis a grave question; can you answer it?The more we wonder at the curious warpFrom truth, the more we see the o’erruling lawOf natural love in all things, which will beA fraud in instinct, rather than a flawIn care parental. Oh! how gracious good,That all the generations, as they rise,Of living things are not sustained by oneGreat abstract fiat of Benevolence;But by a thousand separate forms of love,All tremblingly alive: The human heart,With all its conduits and its channel-pipes,Warm, flowing, full, quiveringly keen and strongIn all its tendrils and its bloody threads,Laying hold of its children with the fastBands of a man; fish, bird, beast, reptile, insect,The wallowing, belching monsters of the deep,Down to the filmiest people of the leaf,Are all God’s nurses, and draw out the breast,Or brood for Him. Oh! what a system thusOf active love, of every shape and kind,Has been created, from the Heart of HeavenExtended, multiplied, personifiedIn living forms throughout the Universe!In life’s first glee, and first untutored grace,With raven tresses, and with glancing eyes,How beautiful those children, lustrous dark,Pulling the kingcups in the flowery meadow!Born of an Indian Mother: She by night,An orphan damsel on her native hills,Looked down the Khyber Pass, with pity touchedFor the brave strangers that lay slain in heaps,Low in that fatal fold and pen of death.Sorrow had taught her mercy: Forth she wentWith simple cordials from her lonely cot,If she might help to save some wounded foe.By cavern went she, and tall ice-glazed rock,Casting its spectral shadow on the snow,Beneath the hard blue moon. Save her own feetCrushing the starry spangles of the frost,Sound there was none on all the silent hills;And silence filled the valley of the dead.Down went the maid aslant. A cliff’s recessGave forth a living form. A wounded youth,One unit relic of that thick battue,Escaping death, and mastering his deep hurt,From out the bloody Pass had climbed thus farThe mountain side, and rested there a while.The virgin near, up rose he heavily,Staggered into the light, and stood before her,Bowing for help. She gave him sweet-spiced milk,And led him to her home, and hid him thereMonths, till pursuit was o’er, and he was healed,And from her mountains he could safely go.But grateful Walter loved the Affghan girl,And would not go without her: They had taughtEach other language: Will she go with himTo the Isles of the West, and be his wife?Nor less she loved the fair-haired islander,And softly answered, Yes. And she is nowHis Christian wife, wondering and loving muchIn this mild land, honoured and loved of all;With such a grace of glad humilityShe does her duties. And, to crown her joyOf holy wedded life, her God has given herThose beauteous children, with the laughing voices,Pulling the kingcups in the flowery meadow.Our walk is o’er. But let us see our bees,Before we turn into our ivied porch.The little honey-folk, how wise are they!Their polity, their industry, their work,The help they take from man, and what they give himOf fragrant nectar, sea-green, clear, and sweet,Invest them almost with the dignityOf human neighbourhood, without the intrusion.Coming and going, what a hum and stir!The dewy morn they love, the sunny day,With showery dropping balms, liquoring the flowersIn every vein and eye. But when the heavensGrow cloudy, and the quick-engendered blastsDarken and whiten as they skiff alongThe mountain-tops, till all the nearer air,Seized with the gloom, is turbid, dense, and cold,Back from their far-off foraging the bees,In myriads, saddened into small black motes,Strike through the troubled air, sharp past your head,And almost hitting you, their lines of flightConverging, thickening, as they draw near home;So much they fear the storms, so much they loveThe safety of their straw-built citadels.Noon.At times a bird slides through the glossy air,O’er the enamelled woodlands; but no chirpOf song is heard: All’s dumb and panting heat.How waste and idle are yon river sands,Far-stretching white! The stream is almost shrunkDown to the green gleet of its slippery stones;And in it stand the cows, switching their tails,With circling drops, and ruminating slow.A hermit glutton on a sodded root,Fish-gorged, his head and bill sunk to his breast,The lean blue heron stands, and there will standMotionless all the long dull afternoon.But the old woods are near, with grateful glooms,Dells, silent grottoes, and cold sunken wells;There rest on mossy seats, and be refreshed:Thankful you toil not, at this blazing hour,Beneath the dog-star, in some sandy laneOf the strait sea-coast town, pent closely inWith walls of fiery brick, their tops stuck o’erWith broken pointed glass, and danders hotFencing their feet, with sparse ears of wild barleyParched, dun, and dead amongst them; o’er your headThe smoke of potteries, and the foundry ventSending its quivering exhalation up—Heat more than smoke; to aggravate the whole,The sweltering, smothering, suffocating whole,The oppressive sense upon your heart of man’sWorst dwellings round you—smells of stinking fish,Torn dingy shirts, half washed, flea-spotted still,Hung out on bending strings at broken windows;Hunger, and fear, and pale disordered faces,Lies, drunken strife, strokes, cries, and new-coined oaths,All hot and rough from the red mint of hell.Lo! with her screwed tail cocked aloft in air,The cottar’s cow comes scampering clumsily.Her, sorely cupped and leeched, the clegs have stungFrom her propriety; and hoisting highHer standard of distress, this way she comesCantering unwieldily, her heavy udder,Dropping out milk, swinging from side to side.Pathetic sight! So long have we been usedTo see the solemn tenor of her life,From calfhood to her present reverend ageOf wrinkled front, scored horns, and hollow back,—Tenor unbroken, save when once or twiceA pool of frothy blood before the smithyHas made her snuff, snort, paw, and toss her head,Wheel round and round, and slavering bellow mad:That blood the cadger’s horse, seized with the bots,When he on cobwebbed clover, raw and cold,Had supped, gave spouting, spinning from his neck,Beneath the blacksmith’s mallet and his fleam.Is this the cow, at home so patient o’erThe cool sobriety of cabbage leaves,Hoarse cropped for her at morn, when the night-dropsLie like big diamonds in the freshened stock,—Drops broken, running, scattered, but againConglobed like quicksilver, until they fallShaken to earth? Is this the milky mother,That long has given to thankful squeezing hands,With such an air of steady usefulness,The children’s streaming food—twelve pints a day;And with her butter, and her cheese, and cansOf white-green whey, has bought the grocery goods,Snuff and tobacco? Oh! the affecting sight!Help, help, ye Shades, the venerable brute!But gradually subsiding to a trot,She takes the river with a fellow-feeling,And, modestly aloof to raise no strife,There settles down behind the stranger cows.Ah! Crummie, you have stolen this scampering marchUpon the little cow-herd. Far are heardThe opening roarings of his wondering fear,Nearer and nearer still, as they come on,Loading the noontide air. Three other friendsHad he to feed, besides the family cow.Twin cushats young, the yellow hair now sparseIn their thick gathering plumage, nestling lieWithin his bonnet; they can snap, and strikeWith raised wing; grown vigorous thus, they needA larger dinner of provided peas.Nor less his hawk, shrill-screaming as it shakesIts wings for food, must have the knotted wormsFrom moist cold beds below the unwholesome stone,That never has been raised—if he be quickTo raise it, and can seize them ere they slinkInto their holes, or, when half in, can draw them,With a long, steady, gentle, equal pull,Tenacious though they be, and tender stretchedTill every rib seems ready to give way,Unbroken out in all their slippery length.These now he wandered seeking, for the groundWas parched, and they the surface all had left;And many a stone he raised, but nothing saw,Save insect eggs, and shells of beetles’ wings,Slaters, cocoons, and yellow centipedes.Thus was he drawn away. When he came back,His cow was gone. Dismayed, he looked all round.At last he saw, far-off on the horizon,Her hoisted tail. He seized his birds and ran,Following the tail, and as he ran he roared.Yonder he comes in view with red-hot face;Roaring the more to see old Crummie takeThe river—how shall he dislodge her thence;And get her home again? Oh! deep distress!The world is flooded with the dazzling day.We take the woods. Couched in the checkered skirts,Below an elm we lie. A sylvan streamIs sleeping by us in a cold still pool,Within whose glassy depth the little fishesHang, as in crystal air. Freckled with gleams,’Neath yonder hazelly bank that roofs it o’erWith roots and moss, it slides and slips away.Here a ray’d spot of light, intensely clear,Strikes our eyes through the leaves; a sunbeam thereComes slanting in between the mossy trunksOf the green trees, and misty shimmering fallsWith a long slope down on the glossy ferns:Light filmy flies athwart it brightening shoot,Or dance and hover in the motty ray.We love the umbrageous Elm. Its well-crimp’d leaf,Serrated, fresh, and rough as a cow’s tongue,Is healthy, natural, and cooling, farBeyond the glazy polish of the bay,Famed though it be, but glittering hard as if’Twere liquor’d o’er with some metallic wash.Thus pleased, laid back, up through the Elm o’erheadWe look. The little Creeper of the TreeLends life to it: See how the antic bird,Her bosom to the bark, goes round awayBehind the trunk, but quaintly reappearsThrough a rough cleft above, with busy billPicking her lunch; and now among the leavesOur birdie goes, bright glimmering in the greenAnd yellow light that fills the tender tree.Low o’er the burnie bends the drooping Birch:Fair tree! Though oft its cuticle of barkHangs in white fluttering tatters on its breast,No fairer twinkles in the dewy glade.Sweet is its scented breath, the wild deer loves it,And snuffs and browses at the budding spray.But far more tempting to the truant’s eyes,Wandering the woods, its thick excrescencesOf bundled matted sprigs: Soft steals he on,To find what seems afar the cushat’s nest,Or pie’s or crow’s. Deceived, yet if the treeIs old, he seeks in its decaying cleftsThe fungous cork-wood that gives balls to boys,And smooth-skinn’d razor-strops to bearded men.Bent all on play, our little urchin nextPeels off a bit of bark, and with his nailsSplits and divides the many-coated rindTo the last outer thinness; then he holdsThe silky shivering film between his lips,And pipes and whistles, mimicking the thrush.Nor less the Beauty of our natural woodsIs useful too. What time the housewife’s pirn(Oh, cheerless change that stopp’d the birring wheel!)Whirled glimmering round before the evening fire,’Twas birchen aye. And when our tough-heel’d shoesHave stood the tear and wear of stony hillsBeyond our hope, we bless the birchen pegs.In Norway o’er the foam, their crackling firesAre fed with bark of birch, and there they thatchTheir simple houses with its pliant twigs.At home, the virtues of our civic besomsConfess the birch. The Master of the SchoolIs now “abroad:” Oh! may he never miss,Wander where’er he will, the birchen shaw,But cut the immemorial ferula,To lay in pickle for rebellious imps,And discipline to worth the British youth.The Queen can make a Duke; but cannot makeOne of the forest’s old Aristocrats.Behold yon Oak! What glory in his bole,His boughs, his branches, his broad frondent head!The ancient Nobleman! Not She who rulesThe kingdoms, many-isled, on which the sunNever goes down, with all the investitureOf garters, coronets, scutcheons, swords, and stars,Could make him there at once. Patrician! Nay,King of the woods, his independent realm!Whate’er his titled name, there let him stand,Fit emblem of our British constitution,Full constituted in the rooted Past,With powers, and forces, and accommodations,The growth of ages, not an act or work!Beyond this emblem of old diguity,And far beyond the associated thoughtOf “Hearts of Oak,” that mightiest incarnationOf human power that earth has ever seen—As when we launch’d our Nelson, and he wentThundering around the world, driving the foe,With all their banded hosts, from hemisphereTo hemisphere, before him, by the terrorOf his tremendous name, but overtookAnd thunder-smote them down, swept from the seas,—Beyond all this, the reverend Oak takes backThe heart to elder days of holy awe.Such oaks are they, the hoariest of the race,Round Lochwood Tower, the Johnstones’ ancient seat.Bow’d down with very age, and rough all o’erWith scurfy moss, and the depending hairOf parasitic plants, (the mistletoe,Be sure, is there, congenial friend of old,)They look as if no lively little birdDurst hop upon their spirit-awing heads:Perhaps, at midnight hour, Minerva’s bird,The grave, staid owl, may rest a moment there.But solemn visions swarm on every bough,Of Druid doings in old dusky time.When lowers the thunder cloud, and all the treesStand black and still, with what a trump profoundThe wild bee wanders by! But here he is,Hoarse murmuring in the fox-glove’s weigh’d-down bell.Happy in sumner he! but when the daysOf later autumn come, they’ll find him hangingIn torpid stupor, on the horse-knot’s top;Or by the ragweed in the school-boy’s hand,As forth he issues, angry from his bike,Struck down, he’ll die—what time the urchins, bentOn honey, delve into the solid ground:They seize the yellower and the cleaner comb,But drop it quick, when squeezing it they findNought there but milky maggots; then they pickThe darker bits, and suck them, though they beWild, bitter flavoured, in their luscious strength,And dirty brown, and mix’d with earthen mould.The luckier mower in the grassy mead,Turns up with his scythe’s point, or with its edge,The foggie’s bike, a ball of soft, dry fog.With what a sharp, thin, acrid, pent-up buzz,Swarming, it lives and stirs! But when the beesAre all dislodged, and, circling, wheel away,The swain rejoices in that bright clean honey.Ah! there’s Miss Kitty Wren, with her cocked tail,Cocked like a cooper’s thumb. Miss Kitty goesIn ’neath the bank, and then comes out againBy some queer hole. Thus, all the day she pliesHer quest from hedge to bank, scarce ever seenFlying above your head in open air.Unsmitten by the heat where now she is,She strikes into her song—Miss Kitty’s song!(We never think of male in Kitty’s case.)The song is short, and varies not, but yet’Tis not monotonous; with such a pipeOf liquid clearness does she open it,And, with increasing vigour, to the endGo through it quite: Thus, all the year, she sings,Except in frost, the spunky little bird!On mossy stump of thorn, her curious nestIs often built, a twig drawn over it,To bind it firm; but more she loves the roofOf sylvan cave over-arched, where the green twilightGlimmers with golden light, and fox-gloves stand,Tall, purple-faced, her goodly beef-eaters,To guard and dignify her entrance-gate.The ballad vouches that a wee, wee birdOft brings a whispered message to the ear;So here’s our ear, Miss Wren, (your pardon! weMust call you Mrs now,) pray, tell us howYou manage, in your crowded little house,To feed your thirteen young, nor miss one mouthIn its due turn, but give them all fair play?And here’s our other ear; say, ere you go,What means the Bachelor’s Nest? ’Tis oftener foundThan the true finished one. Externally,’Tis built as well; but ne’er we find withinThe cozy feathery lining for the homeOf love parental. Is it, as some think,And as the name, though not precise, implies,Made for your husband, whosoe’er he be,To sleep o’nights in? Or, as others deem,Is it a lure to draw the loiterer’s eyeOff from the genuine nest, not far away?Or, shy and nice, were you disturbed in building;Or by some other instinct, fine and true,Impelled to change your first-projected place,And choose a safer? This your Laureate holds.But here comes Robin. In our boyish days,We thought him Kitty’s husband. By his clearBlack eye, he’s fit to answer for himself.Like her, he sings the whole year round; but sheIs not his wife. See how he turns the headThis way and that, peeping from out the leavesWith curious eye, and still comes hopping nearer.Strong in his individual character,His knowing glance, his shape, his waistcoat red,His pipe mellifluous, and pugnacious pride,Darting to strike intruders from his beat,And other qualities, his love of manIs still his great peculiarity.The starved hedge-sparrow haunts the moistened sink,On gurly winter days, the bitter windRuffling her back, showing the bluer downBeneath her feathers freckled brown above,But ne’er she ventures nearer where man dwells.With sidelong look, bold Robin takes our floor;And when, as now, we rest us in the depthsOf leafy woods, he’s with us in a trice.Such is the genius of red-breasted Robin.Along the shingly shallows of the burn,The smallest bird that walks, and does not hop,How fast yon Wagtail runs; its little feetQuick as a mouse’s! Thus its shaking tailIs kept in even balance, poised and straight.With hopping movements ’twould not harmonise,But, wagging inconveniently more,Mar and confound the bird’s progressive way,When off the wing. Wisdom Divine contrivedThe just proportions of this compromiseBetwixt the motions of the feet and tail.Aloft in air, each chirrup keeping timeWith each successive undulation long,The Wagtail flies, a pleasant summer bird.A moment on the elm above our headRests the Green-linnet. Wordsworth says, He “fromThe cottage-eaves pours forth his song in gushes.”Not so in Scotland: Here he sometimes buildsHis nest within the garden’s beechen hedge;But never haunts our eaves. As for his song,A few short notes, meagre and harsh, are allThis somewhat spiritless and lumpish birdHas ever given us. Can the Master err?With all the short thick rowing of her wingsThe Magpie makes slow way. But her glib tongueGoes chattering fast enough. In yonder fir,The summer solstice cannnot keep her mute.Surely, the bird should speak: Take the young pie,And with a silver sixpence split its tongue,’Twill speak incontinent; thus the notion runsFrom simple father down to simple son,In many parts. Oft in our boyhood’s daysWe’ve seen it tried; but somehow, by bad luck,It always happened that the poor bird died,When, doubtless, just upon the eve of speech.Sore was the splitting then, but far worse now:The sixpence then, worn till it lost the headOf George the Third, was thin as a knife’s edge,And fitly sharp; the coin’s now thick and dull,And makes the clumsier cleaving full of pain.As boys we feared the magpie, for ’twas heldA bird of omen: oft ’twas seen to tearWith mad extravagant bill the cottage thatch,Herald of death within: To neighbouring townsThe schoolboy, sent on morning messages,Counted with awe how many pies at onceHopped on his road; by this he learned to knowThe various fortunes of the coming time.Sweet lore was yours, O Bewick! with that eyeSo keen, yet quiet, for the Beautiful,And for the Droll—that eye so loving large!Yet sweeter, Wilson, yours, as yours a rangeMore ample far, watching the goings-onOf Nature in the boundless solitudes.We know no happier man than him, at once,With native powers, fixed from a restless youth,To a great work congenial, which his mightOf conscious will has mastered ere begun;Life’s work, and the foundation of his fame:But oh! its sweetness, if in Nature’s eyeHis is the privilege to work it out!Such was the work of Wilson. Happy, too,Is Audubon. When Day, like a bright bird,Throughout the heavens has flown, chased by the blackFalcon of Night, he sleeps beneath a tree;Upspringing with the morn, the enthusiast holdsOn his green way rejoicing: His to catch,And fix the creatures of the wildernessIn pictured forms, not in the attitudesOf stiff convenience, but in all their playOf happy natural life, fearless, untamedBy man’s intrusion, wanton, easy, free,Yet full of tart peculiarities,Freakish, and quaint, and ever picturesque,Their secret gestures, and the wild escapesFrom out their eyes; watching how Nature worksHer fine frugalities of means, even thereWhere all is lavish freedom, finer still,The compensations of her processes,Throughout their whole economy of life.Sweet study! Oh! for one long summer dayWith Audubon in the far Western woods!We leave the shade, and take the open fields,Winding our way by immemorial paths,So soft and green, the poor man’s privilege:May jealous freedom ever keep them free!Such is the sultry languor of the day,The eye sees nothing clear. But now it restsOn yonder sable patch—ah! yes, a bandOf mourners gathered round a closing grave,In the old churchyard. How unnaturalThe black solemnity in such a dayOf light and life! But who was he or sheWho thus goes dust to dust? A matron ripeIn years and grace at once for death and Heaven.Her aged father’s stay until he died,She then was wed and widowed in one year,And made a mother. With her infant sonShe dwelt in peace, and nourished him with love.Mild and sedate, upgrew the old-fashioned boy;And went to church with her, a little manIn garb and gravity: you would have smiledTo see him coming in. She lifted himUp to his seat beside her, drew him near,And took his hand in hers. There as he sate,Oft looked she down to see if he was sleeping;And drowsy half, half in the languor softOf innocent trust and aimless piety,The child looked up into his mother’s face.And she looked down into his eyes, and sawThe neighbouring window in their pupils’ balls,With all its panes, reflected small but clear;And gave his hand soft pressure with her hand,Still shifting, trying still to be more soft.God took him from her. In a holy stillnessShe dwelt concentred. Decent were her means,And so she changed not outwardly. No troubleGave she to neighbours; but she helped them oft.And when she died, her grave-clothes, there they were,Made by her own preparing heart and hand,And neatly folded in an antique chest:Not even a pin was wanting, where, to dressHer body with due care, a pin should be;And every pin was stuck in its own place.Nor was all this from any hard mistrustOf human love, for she the charitiesTook with glad heart; but from a strength of mindWhich stood equipped in every point for death,And, loving order, loved it to the end.The mourners all are gone. How lonely stillThe churchyard now! Here in their simple gravesThe generations of the hamlet sleep:All grassy simple, save that, here and there,Love-planted flowerets deck the lowly sod.Blame not that sorrowing love: ’Tis far too trueTo make of Burial one of the Fine Arts;Yet the sweet thought that scented violets springFrom the loved ashes, is a natural warAgainst the foul dishonours of the grave.Bloom then, ye little flowers, and sweetly smell;Draw up the heart’s dust in your flushing hues,And odorous breath, and give it to the bee,And give it to the air, circling to goFrom life to life, through all that living fluxOf interchange which makes this wondrous world.Go where it will, the dear dust is not lost;Found it will be in its own place and form,On that great day, the Resurrection Day.Evening.Those shouts proclaim the village school is out.This way and that, the children break in groups;Some by the sunny stile, and meadow path,Slow sauntering homeward; others to the burnBounding, beneath the stones, and roots, and banks,With stealthy hand to catch the spotted trout,Or stab the eel, or slip their noose of hairOver the bearded loach, and jerk him out.Here on his donkey, slow as any snailAt morn from the far farm, but, homeward now,Willing and fast, an urchin blithe and boldComes scampering on: His face is to the tailIn fun grotesque; stooping, with both his handsHe holds the hairy rump; his kicking feetGo walloping; his empty flask of tin,That bore his noon of milk, quiver of life,And not of death, high-bounding on his back,Rattles the while. With many a whoop behind,Scouring the dusty road with their bare feet,In wicked glee, a squad of fellow-impsCome on with thistles and with nettle-wands,Pursuingly, intent to goad and vexThe long-eared cuddy: He, the cuddy, laysHis long ears back upon his neck, his headLowered the while, and out behind him flingsHigh his indignant heels, at once to keepThat hurly-burly of tormentors off,And rid his back of that insulting rider.Unconscious boyhood! Oh! the perils nearOf luring Pleasures! In the evening shade,Drowsy reclining, in my dream I sawA comely youth, with wanton flowing curls,Chase down the sunlit vale a glittering flightOf winged creatures, some like birds, and someLike butterflies, and moths of marvellous sizeAnd beauty, purple-ruffed, and spotted richWith velvet tippets, and their wings like flame—Onward they drew him to a coming cloud,With skirts of vapoury gold, but steaming denseAnd dark behind, close gathering from the ground:And on and in he went, in heedless chase.And straight those skirts curled inward, and becamePart of the gloom: Compacted, solid, black,It has him in, and it will keep him there.The cloud stood still a space, as if to giveTime for the acting of some doom within,Ominous, silent, grim. It moved again,Tumultuous stirred, and broke in seams and flaws,And gave me glimpses of its inner womb:Outdarting forkèd tongues, and brazen fins,Blue web-winged vampire-bats, and harpy faces,And dragon crests, and vulture heads obscene,I there beheld: Fierce were their levelled looks,As if inflicted on some victim. WhoThat victim was, I saw not. But are theseThe painted Pleasures which that youth pursuedAdown the vale? How cruel changed! But where,And what is he? Is he their victim there?Heavy the cloud went passing by. From outIts further end I saw that young man come,Worn and dejected; specks and spots of dirtWere on his face, and round his sunken eyes;Hollow his cheeks, lean were his bony brows;And lank and clammy were the locks that oncePlayed curling round his neck: The Passions thereHave done their work on him. With trembling limbs,And stumbling as he went, he sate him down,With folded arms, upon a sombre hill,Apart from men, and from his father’s house,That wept from him; and, sitting there, he lookedWith heavy-laden eyes down on the ground.But the night fell, and hid him from my view.In yonder sheltered nook of nibbled sward,Beside the wood, a gipsy band are camped;And there they’ll sleep the summer night away.By stealthy holes, their ragged tawny broodCreep through the hedges, in their pilfering questOf sticks and pales, to make their evening fire.Untutored things, scarce brought beneath the lawsAnd meek provisions of this ancient State!Yet, is it wise, with wealth and power like hers,And such resources of good government,To let so many of her sons grow upIn untaught darkness and consecutive vice?True, we are jealous free, and hate constraint,And every cognisance o’er private life;Yet, not to name a higher principle,’Twere but an institution of police,Due to society, preventativeOf crime, the cheapest and the best supportOf order, right, and law, that not one child,In all this realm of ours, should be allowedTo grow up uninstructed for this life,And for the next. Were every child State-claimed,Laid hold of thus, and thus prepared to beA proper member of society,What founts of vice, with all their issuing streams,Might thus be closed for ever, and at once!Good propagating good, so far as manCan work with God. Oh! this is the great workTo change our moral world, and people Heaven.Would we had Christian statesmen to devise,And shape, and work it out! Our libertiesHave limits and abatements manifold;And soon the national will, which makes restraintPart of its freedom, oft the soundest part,Would recognise the wisdom of the plan,Arming the state with full authorityFor such an institute of renovation.This work achieved at home, with what a largeConsistent exercise of power, and rightTo hope the blessing, should we then go forth,Pushing into the dark of Heathen worldsThe crystal frontiers of the invading Light,The Gospel Light! The glad submitting EarthWould cry, Behold, their own land is a landOf perfect living light—how beautifulUpon the mountains are their blessed feet!Through yonder meadow comes the milk-maid’s song,Clear, but not blithe, a melancholy chaunt,With dying falls monotonous; for youthAffects the dark and sad: Her ditty tellsOf captive lorn, or broken-hearted maid,Left of her lover, but in dream thrice dreamtWarned of his fate, when, with his fellow-crewOf ghastly sailors on benighted seasHe clings to some black, wet, and slippery rock,Soon to be washed away; what time their ship,Driven on the whirlpool’s wheel, is sent below,And ground upon the millstones of the sea.The song has ceased. Up the dim elmy laneThe damsel comes. But at its leafy mouthThe one dear lad has watched her entering in,And with her now comes softly side by side.But oft he plucks a leaf from off the hedge,For lack of words, in bashful love sincere;Till, in his innocent freedom bolder grown,He crops a dewy gowan from the path,And greatly daring flings it at her cheek.Close o’er the pair, along the green arcade,Now hid, now seen against the evening sky,The wavering, circling, sudden-wheeling batPlays little Cupid, blind enough for that,And fitly fickle in his flights to beThe very Boy-god’s self. Where’er may lieThe power of arrows with the golden tips,That silent lad is smit, nor less that girlIs cleft of heart: Be this the token true:—Next Sabbath morn, when o’er the pasture hillsBarefoot she comes to church, with Bible wrappedIn clean white napkin, and the sprig of mintAnd southernwood laid duly in the leaves,And down she sits beside the burn to washHer feet, and don her stockings and her shoes,Before she come unto the House of Prayer,With all her reverence of the Day, she’ll cast(Forgive the simple thing!) her eye askanceInto the mirror of the glassy pool,And give her ringlets the last taking touch,For him who flung the gowan at her cheekIn that soft twilight of the elmy lane.Pensive the setting Day, whether, as nowCloudless it fades away, or far is seen,In long and level parallels of light,Purple and liquid yellow, barred with clouds,Far in the twilight West, seen through some deepEmbrowned grove of venerable trees,Whose pillared stems, apart, but regular,Stand off against the sky: In such a grove,At such an hour, permitted eyes might seeAngels, majestic Shapes, walking the earth,Holding mild converse for the good of man.Day melts into the West, another flakeOf sweet blue Time into the Eternal Past!
Morning.Dear little Isle of ours! your very clouds,Ranged in the east and battlemented black,White flock of zenith, or, with stormy glory,Tumbling tumultuous o’er the western hills,Lend power and beauty to your pictured face,Relieved and deepened in its light and shade,Varied of dale and mountain, pleasing stillThrough all the seasons, as they come and go,—Blue airy Summer, Autumn brown and grave,Gnarled sapless Winter, and clear glinting Spring.Mine be the cottage, large enough for use,Yet fully occupied, and cheerful thus.Desolate he who, with his means abridged,And wants reduced, yet pride of propertyStill unimpaired, dwells in a narrow flank;Of his ancestral house, gloomily vastBeyond his need,—dwells with the faded ghostOf former greatness. There the bellied spider,That works in cool and silent palaces,Has halls his own. The labyrinthine roomsSeem haunted all. Mysterious laden airsMove the dim tapestries drearily. And shapesSpectral at hollow midnight beckoning glideDown the far corridors, and faint away.Up with the summer sun! Earlier at times,And see gray brindled dawn come up before him;There’s natural health, there’s moral healing inThe hour so naked clear, so dewy cool!But oft I wish a chamber in the blackCastle of Indolence, far in, where sparkOf prying light ne’er comes, nor sound of cockIs heard, nor the long howl of houseless cur,Nor clock, nor shrill-winged gnat, nor buzzing flyThat, by the snoring member undeterred,Aye settles on your nose’s tickled tipTormentingly. Deep in that charmèd restLaid, I could sleep the weary world away,Months at a time—so listless fancy thinks.Oh! curse of sleeplessness! Haggard and pale,The tyrant Nero, see him from his bedWandering about, haunting the long dim halls,And silent stairs, at midnight, startled oftAt his own footsteps, like a guilty thingSharp turning round aghast. The palace sleeps,And all the city sleeps, all save its lord.Then looks he to the windows of the east,Wearily watching for the morning light,That comes not at his will. Down on his bedHe flings himself again. His eyeballs ache;His temples throb; his pillow’s hot and hard;And through his dried brain thoughts and feelings drift,Tumultuous, unrestrained, carrying his soulOn the high fever’s surge. The imperial worldFor one short dewy hour of healing sleep!Worlds cannot buy the blessing. Up he reels,And staggers forth. Slow-coming day at lengthHas found him thus. Its living busy forms,Its turms, its senators, its gorgeous guests,Bowing in homage from barbaric isles,Its scenes, its duties are to him a strangePhantasmagoria: Through its ghastly lightWildered he lives. To feel and be assuredHe yet has hold on being, with the drugsOf monstrous pleasures, cruelty and lust,He drugs his spirit; ever longing stillFor the soft hour of eve, if sleep may comeAfter another day has worn him out.But images of black, bed-fellows strange,Lie down with him; drawing his curtain back,Unearthly shapes, and unimagined faces,Look in upon him, near down on his eyes,Nearer and nearer still, till they are forcedTo wink beneath the infliction, like a weightOf actual pressure, solid, heavy, felt.But winking hard, a thousand coloured motesBegin to dance confused, and central stars,And spots of light, welling and widening outIn rings concentric, peopling all the blindBlack vacancy before his burning balls.But soon they change to leering antic shapes,And dread-suggesting fiends. Dim, far away,Long dripping corpses, swaying in the waves,Slowly cast up, arise; gashed, gory throats,And headless trunks of men, are nearer seen,And every form of tragic butchery—The myriad victims of his power abusedBy sea and land. To give their hideousnessDue light, a ceiling of clear molten fire,Figured with sprawling imps, begins to glowHot overhead, casting a brazen lightDown on the murdered crew. All bent on him,Near, nearer still, they swarm, they crowd, they press;And round and round, and through and through the rout,The naked Pleasures, knit with demons, dance.Wild whirls his brain anew. This night is asThe last, and far more terrible. Guilt thus,And sleeplessness, more than perpetuateEach other—dreadful lineage! Let us hope,For human nature, that the man was mad.Up from your blameless sleep, go forth and meetThe glistening morn, over the smoking lawnSpangled, by briery balks, and brambled lanes,Where blows the dog-rose, and the honey-suckleHangs o’er the heavy hedge its trailing sheafOf stems and leaves, tendrils and clasping rings,Cold dews, and bugle blooms, and honey smells,And wild bees swinging as they murmur there.The speckled thrush, startled from off the thorn,Shakes down the crystal drops. With spurring haste,The rabbit scuds across the grassy path;Pauses a moment—with its form and earsArrect to listen; then, with glimpse of white,Springs through the hedge into the ferny brake.Or taste the freshness of the pastoral hillsOn such a morn: Light scarfs of thinning mistIn graceful lingerings round their shoulders hang;New-washed and white, the sheep go nibbling upThe high green slopes; a hundred gurgling rills,Sparkling with foam-bells, to your very heartSend their delicious coolness; hark! again,The cuckoo somewhere in the sunny skirtsOf yonder patch of the old natural woods;With sudden iron croak, clear o’er the graySummit, o’erhanging you, with levell’d flight,The raven shoots into the deep blue air.Lo! in the confluence of the mountain glens,The small gray ruin of an ancient kirk.’Twas the first kirk, so faithful reverence tells,Of Scotland’s Reformation: And it drew,Now as before, from all the hills aroundThe worshippers; till, in a richer vale,To suit the populous hamlet rising there,A larger, nearer parish church was built.Thus was the old one left. But there it stands,And there will stand till the slow tooth of TimeNibble it all away; for it is fencedCompletely round, not with just awe alone,But superstitious fears, the abuse of aweIn simple minds: Strange judgments, so they say,Have fallen on those who once or twice have daredTo lay their hands upon its holy stonesFor secular uses, and remove its bell.With such excess of love—we’ll blame it not—Does Scotland love her Church. Be it so stillAnd be its emblem still the Burning Bush!Bush of the wilderness! See how the flamesBicker and burn around it; but a lowSoft breath of the great Spirit of SalvationBlows gracious by, and the dear little Bush,The desert Bush, in every freshened leafUncurled, unsinged in every flowery bud,Fragrant with heavenly dews, and dropping balsamsGood for the hurt soul’s healing, waves and rustles,Even in the very heart of the red burning,In livelier green and fairer blossoming.Earth sends her soft warm incense up to heaven;The birds their matins sing. Joining the hymn,The tremulous voice of psalms from human lipsIs heard in the free air. You wonder where,And who the worshippers. Behold them now,Down in the grassy hollow lowly seated,Close by the mountain burn—an old gray man,His head uncovered, and the Book of lifeSpread on his knee, a female by his side,His aged wife, both beggars by their garb,With frail cracked voices, yet with hearts attunedTo the immortal harmonies of faith,And hope, and love, in the green wildernessPraising the Lord their God—a touching sight!High in the Heavenly House not made with hands,The archangels sing, angels, and saints in white,Striking their golden harps before the Throne;But, in the pauses of the symphonyA voice comes up from Earth, the simple psalmOf those old beggars, heard by the Ear of GodWith more acceptance than hosannahs sungIn blissful jubilee. ’Tis hard to thinkThe people of the Lord must beg their bread;Yet happy they who, poor as this old twainOn earth, like them, have laid fast titled holdUpon the treasures of Eternity!Her nest is here: But ah! the cunning thing,See where our White-throat, like the partridge, feignsA broken wing, thick fluttering o’er the ground,And tumbling oft, to draw you from her broodWithin the bush. Now that’s a lie, my birdie!Your wing’s not broken; but we’ll grant you this,—The lie’s a white one, white as your own throat.Yet how should He who is the Truth itself,And whose unquestioned prompting instinct is,Implant deceit within your little breast,And make you act it, even to save your young?The whole creation groans for man, for sin,And death its consequence: We’re changed to youIn our relations, birdie; as a partOf that primeval ill, we rob your nest.To meet this change, and in God’s own permissionOf moral wrong, was it, that guile was givenEven to the truest instinct of your love;And your deceit is our reflected sin?Subtle philosopher, or sound divine,’Tis a grave question; can you answer it?The more we wonder at the curious warpFrom truth, the more we see the o’erruling lawOf natural love in all things, which will beA fraud in instinct, rather than a flawIn care parental. Oh! how gracious good,That all the generations, as they rise,Of living things are not sustained by oneGreat abstract fiat of Benevolence;But by a thousand separate forms of love,All tremblingly alive: The human heart,With all its conduits and its channel-pipes,Warm, flowing, full, quiveringly keen and strongIn all its tendrils and its bloody threads,Laying hold of its children with the fastBands of a man; fish, bird, beast, reptile, insect,The wallowing, belching monsters of the deep,Down to the filmiest people of the leaf,Are all God’s nurses, and draw out the breast,Or brood for Him. Oh! what a system thusOf active love, of every shape and kind,Has been created, from the Heart of HeavenExtended, multiplied, personifiedIn living forms throughout the Universe!In life’s first glee, and first untutored grace,With raven tresses, and with glancing eyes,How beautiful those children, lustrous dark,Pulling the kingcups in the flowery meadow!Born of an Indian Mother: She by night,An orphan damsel on her native hills,Looked down the Khyber Pass, with pity touchedFor the brave strangers that lay slain in heaps,Low in that fatal fold and pen of death.Sorrow had taught her mercy: Forth she wentWith simple cordials from her lonely cot,If she might help to save some wounded foe.By cavern went she, and tall ice-glazed rock,Casting its spectral shadow on the snow,Beneath the hard blue moon. Save her own feetCrushing the starry spangles of the frost,Sound there was none on all the silent hills;And silence filled the valley of the dead.Down went the maid aslant. A cliff’s recessGave forth a living form. A wounded youth,One unit relic of that thick battue,Escaping death, and mastering his deep hurt,From out the bloody Pass had climbed thus farThe mountain side, and rested there a while.The virgin near, up rose he heavily,Staggered into the light, and stood before her,Bowing for help. She gave him sweet-spiced milk,And led him to her home, and hid him thereMonths, till pursuit was o’er, and he was healed,And from her mountains he could safely go.But grateful Walter loved the Affghan girl,And would not go without her: They had taughtEach other language: Will she go with himTo the Isles of the West, and be his wife?Nor less she loved the fair-haired islander,And softly answered, Yes. And she is nowHis Christian wife, wondering and loving muchIn this mild land, honoured and loved of all;With such a grace of glad humilityShe does her duties. And, to crown her joyOf holy wedded life, her God has given herThose beauteous children, with the laughing voices,Pulling the kingcups in the flowery meadow.Our walk is o’er. But let us see our bees,Before we turn into our ivied porch.The little honey-folk, how wise are they!Their polity, their industry, their work,The help they take from man, and what they give himOf fragrant nectar, sea-green, clear, and sweet,Invest them almost with the dignityOf human neighbourhood, without the intrusion.Coming and going, what a hum and stir!The dewy morn they love, the sunny day,With showery dropping balms, liquoring the flowersIn every vein and eye. But when the heavensGrow cloudy, and the quick-engendered blastsDarken and whiten as they skiff alongThe mountain-tops, till all the nearer air,Seized with the gloom, is turbid, dense, and cold,Back from their far-off foraging the bees,In myriads, saddened into small black motes,Strike through the troubled air, sharp past your head,And almost hitting you, their lines of flightConverging, thickening, as they draw near home;So much they fear the storms, so much they loveThe safety of their straw-built citadels.Noon.At times a bird slides through the glossy air,O’er the enamelled woodlands; but no chirpOf song is heard: All’s dumb and panting heat.How waste and idle are yon river sands,Far-stretching white! The stream is almost shrunkDown to the green gleet of its slippery stones;And in it stand the cows, switching their tails,With circling drops, and ruminating slow.A hermit glutton on a sodded root,Fish-gorged, his head and bill sunk to his breast,The lean blue heron stands, and there will standMotionless all the long dull afternoon.But the old woods are near, with grateful glooms,Dells, silent grottoes, and cold sunken wells;There rest on mossy seats, and be refreshed:Thankful you toil not, at this blazing hour,Beneath the dog-star, in some sandy laneOf the strait sea-coast town, pent closely inWith walls of fiery brick, their tops stuck o’erWith broken pointed glass, and danders hotFencing their feet, with sparse ears of wild barleyParched, dun, and dead amongst them; o’er your headThe smoke of potteries, and the foundry ventSending its quivering exhalation up—Heat more than smoke; to aggravate the whole,The sweltering, smothering, suffocating whole,The oppressive sense upon your heart of man’sWorst dwellings round you—smells of stinking fish,Torn dingy shirts, half washed, flea-spotted still,Hung out on bending strings at broken windows;Hunger, and fear, and pale disordered faces,Lies, drunken strife, strokes, cries, and new-coined oaths,All hot and rough from the red mint of hell.Lo! with her screwed tail cocked aloft in air,The cottar’s cow comes scampering clumsily.Her, sorely cupped and leeched, the clegs have stungFrom her propriety; and hoisting highHer standard of distress, this way she comesCantering unwieldily, her heavy udder,Dropping out milk, swinging from side to side.Pathetic sight! So long have we been usedTo see the solemn tenor of her life,From calfhood to her present reverend ageOf wrinkled front, scored horns, and hollow back,—Tenor unbroken, save when once or twiceA pool of frothy blood before the smithyHas made her snuff, snort, paw, and toss her head,Wheel round and round, and slavering bellow mad:That blood the cadger’s horse, seized with the bots,When he on cobwebbed clover, raw and cold,Had supped, gave spouting, spinning from his neck,Beneath the blacksmith’s mallet and his fleam.Is this the cow, at home so patient o’erThe cool sobriety of cabbage leaves,Hoarse cropped for her at morn, when the night-dropsLie like big diamonds in the freshened stock,—Drops broken, running, scattered, but againConglobed like quicksilver, until they fallShaken to earth? Is this the milky mother,That long has given to thankful squeezing hands,With such an air of steady usefulness,The children’s streaming food—twelve pints a day;And with her butter, and her cheese, and cansOf white-green whey, has bought the grocery goods,Snuff and tobacco? Oh! the affecting sight!Help, help, ye Shades, the venerable brute!But gradually subsiding to a trot,She takes the river with a fellow-feeling,And, modestly aloof to raise no strife,There settles down behind the stranger cows.Ah! Crummie, you have stolen this scampering marchUpon the little cow-herd. Far are heardThe opening roarings of his wondering fear,Nearer and nearer still, as they come on,Loading the noontide air. Three other friendsHad he to feed, besides the family cow.Twin cushats young, the yellow hair now sparseIn their thick gathering plumage, nestling lieWithin his bonnet; they can snap, and strikeWith raised wing; grown vigorous thus, they needA larger dinner of provided peas.Nor less his hawk, shrill-screaming as it shakesIts wings for food, must have the knotted wormsFrom moist cold beds below the unwholesome stone,That never has been raised—if he be quickTo raise it, and can seize them ere they slinkInto their holes, or, when half in, can draw them,With a long, steady, gentle, equal pull,Tenacious though they be, and tender stretchedTill every rib seems ready to give way,Unbroken out in all their slippery length.These now he wandered seeking, for the groundWas parched, and they the surface all had left;And many a stone he raised, but nothing saw,Save insect eggs, and shells of beetles’ wings,Slaters, cocoons, and yellow centipedes.Thus was he drawn away. When he came back,His cow was gone. Dismayed, he looked all round.At last he saw, far-off on the horizon,Her hoisted tail. He seized his birds and ran,Following the tail, and as he ran he roared.Yonder he comes in view with red-hot face;Roaring the more to see old Crummie takeThe river—how shall he dislodge her thence;And get her home again? Oh! deep distress!The world is flooded with the dazzling day.We take the woods. Couched in the checkered skirts,Below an elm we lie. A sylvan streamIs sleeping by us in a cold still pool,Within whose glassy depth the little fishesHang, as in crystal air. Freckled with gleams,’Neath yonder hazelly bank that roofs it o’erWith roots and moss, it slides and slips away.Here a ray’d spot of light, intensely clear,Strikes our eyes through the leaves; a sunbeam thereComes slanting in between the mossy trunksOf the green trees, and misty shimmering fallsWith a long slope down on the glossy ferns:Light filmy flies athwart it brightening shoot,Or dance and hover in the motty ray.We love the umbrageous Elm. Its well-crimp’d leaf,Serrated, fresh, and rough as a cow’s tongue,Is healthy, natural, and cooling, farBeyond the glazy polish of the bay,Famed though it be, but glittering hard as if’Twere liquor’d o’er with some metallic wash.Thus pleased, laid back, up through the Elm o’erheadWe look. The little Creeper of the TreeLends life to it: See how the antic bird,Her bosom to the bark, goes round awayBehind the trunk, but quaintly reappearsThrough a rough cleft above, with busy billPicking her lunch; and now among the leavesOur birdie goes, bright glimmering in the greenAnd yellow light that fills the tender tree.Low o’er the burnie bends the drooping Birch:Fair tree! Though oft its cuticle of barkHangs in white fluttering tatters on its breast,No fairer twinkles in the dewy glade.Sweet is its scented breath, the wild deer loves it,And snuffs and browses at the budding spray.But far more tempting to the truant’s eyes,Wandering the woods, its thick excrescencesOf bundled matted sprigs: Soft steals he on,To find what seems afar the cushat’s nest,Or pie’s or crow’s. Deceived, yet if the treeIs old, he seeks in its decaying cleftsThe fungous cork-wood that gives balls to boys,And smooth-skinn’d razor-strops to bearded men.Bent all on play, our little urchin nextPeels off a bit of bark, and with his nailsSplits and divides the many-coated rindTo the last outer thinness; then he holdsThe silky shivering film between his lips,And pipes and whistles, mimicking the thrush.Nor less the Beauty of our natural woodsIs useful too. What time the housewife’s pirn(Oh, cheerless change that stopp’d the birring wheel!)Whirled glimmering round before the evening fire,’Twas birchen aye. And when our tough-heel’d shoesHave stood the tear and wear of stony hillsBeyond our hope, we bless the birchen pegs.In Norway o’er the foam, their crackling firesAre fed with bark of birch, and there they thatchTheir simple houses with its pliant twigs.At home, the virtues of our civic besomsConfess the birch. The Master of the SchoolIs now “abroad:” Oh! may he never miss,Wander where’er he will, the birchen shaw,But cut the immemorial ferula,To lay in pickle for rebellious imps,And discipline to worth the British youth.The Queen can make a Duke; but cannot makeOne of the forest’s old Aristocrats.Behold yon Oak! What glory in his bole,His boughs, his branches, his broad frondent head!The ancient Nobleman! Not She who rulesThe kingdoms, many-isled, on which the sunNever goes down, with all the investitureOf garters, coronets, scutcheons, swords, and stars,Could make him there at once. Patrician! Nay,King of the woods, his independent realm!Whate’er his titled name, there let him stand,Fit emblem of our British constitution,Full constituted in the rooted Past,With powers, and forces, and accommodations,The growth of ages, not an act or work!Beyond this emblem of old diguity,And far beyond the associated thoughtOf “Hearts of Oak,” that mightiest incarnationOf human power that earth has ever seen—As when we launch’d our Nelson, and he wentThundering around the world, driving the foe,With all their banded hosts, from hemisphereTo hemisphere, before him, by the terrorOf his tremendous name, but overtookAnd thunder-smote them down, swept from the seas,—Beyond all this, the reverend Oak takes backThe heart to elder days of holy awe.Such oaks are they, the hoariest of the race,Round Lochwood Tower, the Johnstones’ ancient seat.Bow’d down with very age, and rough all o’erWith scurfy moss, and the depending hairOf parasitic plants, (the mistletoe,Be sure, is there, congenial friend of old,)They look as if no lively little birdDurst hop upon their spirit-awing heads:Perhaps, at midnight hour, Minerva’s bird,The grave, staid owl, may rest a moment there.But solemn visions swarm on every bough,Of Druid doings in old dusky time.When lowers the thunder cloud, and all the treesStand black and still, with what a trump profoundThe wild bee wanders by! But here he is,Hoarse murmuring in the fox-glove’s weigh’d-down bell.Happy in sumner he! but when the daysOf later autumn come, they’ll find him hangingIn torpid stupor, on the horse-knot’s top;Or by the ragweed in the school-boy’s hand,As forth he issues, angry from his bike,Struck down, he’ll die—what time the urchins, bentOn honey, delve into the solid ground:They seize the yellower and the cleaner comb,But drop it quick, when squeezing it they findNought there but milky maggots; then they pickThe darker bits, and suck them, though they beWild, bitter flavoured, in their luscious strength,And dirty brown, and mix’d with earthen mould.The luckier mower in the grassy mead,Turns up with his scythe’s point, or with its edge,The foggie’s bike, a ball of soft, dry fog.With what a sharp, thin, acrid, pent-up buzz,Swarming, it lives and stirs! But when the beesAre all dislodged, and, circling, wheel away,The swain rejoices in that bright clean honey.Ah! there’s Miss Kitty Wren, with her cocked tail,Cocked like a cooper’s thumb. Miss Kitty goesIn ’neath the bank, and then comes out againBy some queer hole. Thus, all the day she pliesHer quest from hedge to bank, scarce ever seenFlying above your head in open air.Unsmitten by the heat where now she is,She strikes into her song—Miss Kitty’s song!(We never think of male in Kitty’s case.)The song is short, and varies not, but yet’Tis not monotonous; with such a pipeOf liquid clearness does she open it,And, with increasing vigour, to the endGo through it quite: Thus, all the year, she sings,Except in frost, the spunky little bird!On mossy stump of thorn, her curious nestIs often built, a twig drawn over it,To bind it firm; but more she loves the roofOf sylvan cave over-arched, where the green twilightGlimmers with golden light, and fox-gloves stand,Tall, purple-faced, her goodly beef-eaters,To guard and dignify her entrance-gate.The ballad vouches that a wee, wee birdOft brings a whispered message to the ear;So here’s our ear, Miss Wren, (your pardon! weMust call you Mrs now,) pray, tell us howYou manage, in your crowded little house,To feed your thirteen young, nor miss one mouthIn its due turn, but give them all fair play?And here’s our other ear; say, ere you go,What means the Bachelor’s Nest? ’Tis oftener foundThan the true finished one. Externally,’Tis built as well; but ne’er we find withinThe cozy feathery lining for the homeOf love parental. Is it, as some think,And as the name, though not precise, implies,Made for your husband, whosoe’er he be,To sleep o’nights in? Or, as others deem,Is it a lure to draw the loiterer’s eyeOff from the genuine nest, not far away?Or, shy and nice, were you disturbed in building;Or by some other instinct, fine and true,Impelled to change your first-projected place,And choose a safer? This your Laureate holds.But here comes Robin. In our boyish days,We thought him Kitty’s husband. By his clearBlack eye, he’s fit to answer for himself.Like her, he sings the whole year round; but sheIs not his wife. See how he turns the headThis way and that, peeping from out the leavesWith curious eye, and still comes hopping nearer.Strong in his individual character,His knowing glance, his shape, his waistcoat red,His pipe mellifluous, and pugnacious pride,Darting to strike intruders from his beat,And other qualities, his love of manIs still his great peculiarity.The starved hedge-sparrow haunts the moistened sink,On gurly winter days, the bitter windRuffling her back, showing the bluer downBeneath her feathers freckled brown above,But ne’er she ventures nearer where man dwells.With sidelong look, bold Robin takes our floor;And when, as now, we rest us in the depthsOf leafy woods, he’s with us in a trice.Such is the genius of red-breasted Robin.Along the shingly shallows of the burn,The smallest bird that walks, and does not hop,How fast yon Wagtail runs; its little feetQuick as a mouse’s! Thus its shaking tailIs kept in even balance, poised and straight.With hopping movements ’twould not harmonise,But, wagging inconveniently more,Mar and confound the bird’s progressive way,When off the wing. Wisdom Divine contrivedThe just proportions of this compromiseBetwixt the motions of the feet and tail.Aloft in air, each chirrup keeping timeWith each successive undulation long,The Wagtail flies, a pleasant summer bird.A moment on the elm above our headRests the Green-linnet. Wordsworth says, He “fromThe cottage-eaves pours forth his song in gushes.”Not so in Scotland: Here he sometimes buildsHis nest within the garden’s beechen hedge;But never haunts our eaves. As for his song,A few short notes, meagre and harsh, are allThis somewhat spiritless and lumpish birdHas ever given us. Can the Master err?With all the short thick rowing of her wingsThe Magpie makes slow way. But her glib tongueGoes chattering fast enough. In yonder fir,The summer solstice cannnot keep her mute.Surely, the bird should speak: Take the young pie,And with a silver sixpence split its tongue,’Twill speak incontinent; thus the notion runsFrom simple father down to simple son,In many parts. Oft in our boyhood’s daysWe’ve seen it tried; but somehow, by bad luck,It always happened that the poor bird died,When, doubtless, just upon the eve of speech.Sore was the splitting then, but far worse now:The sixpence then, worn till it lost the headOf George the Third, was thin as a knife’s edge,And fitly sharp; the coin’s now thick and dull,And makes the clumsier cleaving full of pain.As boys we feared the magpie, for ’twas heldA bird of omen: oft ’twas seen to tearWith mad extravagant bill the cottage thatch,Herald of death within: To neighbouring townsThe schoolboy, sent on morning messages,Counted with awe how many pies at onceHopped on his road; by this he learned to knowThe various fortunes of the coming time.Sweet lore was yours, O Bewick! with that eyeSo keen, yet quiet, for the Beautiful,And for the Droll—that eye so loving large!Yet sweeter, Wilson, yours, as yours a rangeMore ample far, watching the goings-onOf Nature in the boundless solitudes.We know no happier man than him, at once,With native powers, fixed from a restless youth,To a great work congenial, which his mightOf conscious will has mastered ere begun;Life’s work, and the foundation of his fame:But oh! its sweetness, if in Nature’s eyeHis is the privilege to work it out!Such was the work of Wilson. Happy, too,Is Audubon. When Day, like a bright bird,Throughout the heavens has flown, chased by the blackFalcon of Night, he sleeps beneath a tree;Upspringing with the morn, the enthusiast holdsOn his green way rejoicing: His to catch,And fix the creatures of the wildernessIn pictured forms, not in the attitudesOf stiff convenience, but in all their playOf happy natural life, fearless, untamedBy man’s intrusion, wanton, easy, free,Yet full of tart peculiarities,Freakish, and quaint, and ever picturesque,Their secret gestures, and the wild escapesFrom out their eyes; watching how Nature worksHer fine frugalities of means, even thereWhere all is lavish freedom, finer still,The compensations of her processes,Throughout their whole economy of life.Sweet study! Oh! for one long summer dayWith Audubon in the far Western woods!We leave the shade, and take the open fields,Winding our way by immemorial paths,So soft and green, the poor man’s privilege:May jealous freedom ever keep them free!Such is the sultry languor of the day,The eye sees nothing clear. But now it restsOn yonder sable patch—ah! yes, a bandOf mourners gathered round a closing grave,In the old churchyard. How unnaturalThe black solemnity in such a dayOf light and life! But who was he or sheWho thus goes dust to dust? A matron ripeIn years and grace at once for death and Heaven.Her aged father’s stay until he died,She then was wed and widowed in one year,And made a mother. With her infant sonShe dwelt in peace, and nourished him with love.Mild and sedate, upgrew the old-fashioned boy;And went to church with her, a little manIn garb and gravity: you would have smiledTo see him coming in. She lifted himUp to his seat beside her, drew him near,And took his hand in hers. There as he sate,Oft looked she down to see if he was sleeping;And drowsy half, half in the languor softOf innocent trust and aimless piety,The child looked up into his mother’s face.And she looked down into his eyes, and sawThe neighbouring window in their pupils’ balls,With all its panes, reflected small but clear;And gave his hand soft pressure with her hand,Still shifting, trying still to be more soft.God took him from her. In a holy stillnessShe dwelt concentred. Decent were her means,And so she changed not outwardly. No troubleGave she to neighbours; but she helped them oft.And when she died, her grave-clothes, there they were,Made by her own preparing heart and hand,And neatly folded in an antique chest:Not even a pin was wanting, where, to dressHer body with due care, a pin should be;And every pin was stuck in its own place.Nor was all this from any hard mistrustOf human love, for she the charitiesTook with glad heart; but from a strength of mindWhich stood equipped in every point for death,And, loving order, loved it to the end.The mourners all are gone. How lonely stillThe churchyard now! Here in their simple gravesThe generations of the hamlet sleep:All grassy simple, save that, here and there,Love-planted flowerets deck the lowly sod.Blame not that sorrowing love: ’Tis far too trueTo make of Burial one of the Fine Arts;Yet the sweet thought that scented violets springFrom the loved ashes, is a natural warAgainst the foul dishonours of the grave.Bloom then, ye little flowers, and sweetly smell;Draw up the heart’s dust in your flushing hues,And odorous breath, and give it to the bee,And give it to the air, circling to goFrom life to life, through all that living fluxOf interchange which makes this wondrous world.Go where it will, the dear dust is not lost;Found it will be in its own place and form,On that great day, the Resurrection Day.Evening.Those shouts proclaim the village school is out.This way and that, the children break in groups;Some by the sunny stile, and meadow path,Slow sauntering homeward; others to the burnBounding, beneath the stones, and roots, and banks,With stealthy hand to catch the spotted trout,Or stab the eel, or slip their noose of hairOver the bearded loach, and jerk him out.Here on his donkey, slow as any snailAt morn from the far farm, but, homeward now,Willing and fast, an urchin blithe and boldComes scampering on: His face is to the tailIn fun grotesque; stooping, with both his handsHe holds the hairy rump; his kicking feetGo walloping; his empty flask of tin,That bore his noon of milk, quiver of life,And not of death, high-bounding on his back,Rattles the while. With many a whoop behind,Scouring the dusty road with their bare feet,In wicked glee, a squad of fellow-impsCome on with thistles and with nettle-wands,Pursuingly, intent to goad and vexThe long-eared cuddy: He, the cuddy, laysHis long ears back upon his neck, his headLowered the while, and out behind him flingsHigh his indignant heels, at once to keepThat hurly-burly of tormentors off,And rid his back of that insulting rider.Unconscious boyhood! Oh! the perils nearOf luring Pleasures! In the evening shade,Drowsy reclining, in my dream I sawA comely youth, with wanton flowing curls,Chase down the sunlit vale a glittering flightOf winged creatures, some like birds, and someLike butterflies, and moths of marvellous sizeAnd beauty, purple-ruffed, and spotted richWith velvet tippets, and their wings like flame—Onward they drew him to a coming cloud,With skirts of vapoury gold, but steaming denseAnd dark behind, close gathering from the ground:And on and in he went, in heedless chase.And straight those skirts curled inward, and becamePart of the gloom: Compacted, solid, black,It has him in, and it will keep him there.The cloud stood still a space, as if to giveTime for the acting of some doom within,Ominous, silent, grim. It moved again,Tumultuous stirred, and broke in seams and flaws,And gave me glimpses of its inner womb:Outdarting forkèd tongues, and brazen fins,Blue web-winged vampire-bats, and harpy faces,And dragon crests, and vulture heads obscene,I there beheld: Fierce were their levelled looks,As if inflicted on some victim. WhoThat victim was, I saw not. But are theseThe painted Pleasures which that youth pursuedAdown the vale? How cruel changed! But where,And what is he? Is he their victim there?Heavy the cloud went passing by. From outIts further end I saw that young man come,Worn and dejected; specks and spots of dirtWere on his face, and round his sunken eyes;Hollow his cheeks, lean were his bony brows;And lank and clammy were the locks that oncePlayed curling round his neck: The Passions thereHave done their work on him. With trembling limbs,And stumbling as he went, he sate him down,With folded arms, upon a sombre hill,Apart from men, and from his father’s house,That wept from him; and, sitting there, he lookedWith heavy-laden eyes down on the ground.But the night fell, and hid him from my view.In yonder sheltered nook of nibbled sward,Beside the wood, a gipsy band are camped;And there they’ll sleep the summer night away.By stealthy holes, their ragged tawny broodCreep through the hedges, in their pilfering questOf sticks and pales, to make their evening fire.Untutored things, scarce brought beneath the lawsAnd meek provisions of this ancient State!Yet, is it wise, with wealth and power like hers,And such resources of good government,To let so many of her sons grow upIn untaught darkness and consecutive vice?True, we are jealous free, and hate constraint,And every cognisance o’er private life;Yet, not to name a higher principle,’Twere but an institution of police,Due to society, preventativeOf crime, the cheapest and the best supportOf order, right, and law, that not one child,In all this realm of ours, should be allowedTo grow up uninstructed for this life,And for the next. Were every child State-claimed,Laid hold of thus, and thus prepared to beA proper member of society,What founts of vice, with all their issuing streams,Might thus be closed for ever, and at once!Good propagating good, so far as manCan work with God. Oh! this is the great workTo change our moral world, and people Heaven.Would we had Christian statesmen to devise,And shape, and work it out! Our libertiesHave limits and abatements manifold;And soon the national will, which makes restraintPart of its freedom, oft the soundest part,Would recognise the wisdom of the plan,Arming the state with full authorityFor such an institute of renovation.This work achieved at home, with what a largeConsistent exercise of power, and rightTo hope the blessing, should we then go forth,Pushing into the dark of Heathen worldsThe crystal frontiers of the invading Light,The Gospel Light! The glad submitting EarthWould cry, Behold, their own land is a landOf perfect living light—how beautifulUpon the mountains are their blessed feet!Through yonder meadow comes the milk-maid’s song,Clear, but not blithe, a melancholy chaunt,With dying falls monotonous; for youthAffects the dark and sad: Her ditty tellsOf captive lorn, or broken-hearted maid,Left of her lover, but in dream thrice dreamtWarned of his fate, when, with his fellow-crewOf ghastly sailors on benighted seasHe clings to some black, wet, and slippery rock,Soon to be washed away; what time their ship,Driven on the whirlpool’s wheel, is sent below,And ground upon the millstones of the sea.The song has ceased. Up the dim elmy laneThe damsel comes. But at its leafy mouthThe one dear lad has watched her entering in,And with her now comes softly side by side.But oft he plucks a leaf from off the hedge,For lack of words, in bashful love sincere;Till, in his innocent freedom bolder grown,He crops a dewy gowan from the path,And greatly daring flings it at her cheek.Close o’er the pair, along the green arcade,Now hid, now seen against the evening sky,The wavering, circling, sudden-wheeling batPlays little Cupid, blind enough for that,And fitly fickle in his flights to beThe very Boy-god’s self. Where’er may lieThe power of arrows with the golden tips,That silent lad is smit, nor less that girlIs cleft of heart: Be this the token true:—Next Sabbath morn, when o’er the pasture hillsBarefoot she comes to church, with Bible wrappedIn clean white napkin, and the sprig of mintAnd southernwood laid duly in the leaves,And down she sits beside the burn to washHer feet, and don her stockings and her shoes,Before she come unto the House of Prayer,With all her reverence of the Day, she’ll cast(Forgive the simple thing!) her eye askanceInto the mirror of the glassy pool,And give her ringlets the last taking touch,For him who flung the gowan at her cheekIn that soft twilight of the elmy lane.Pensive the setting Day, whether, as nowCloudless it fades away, or far is seen,In long and level parallels of light,Purple and liquid yellow, barred with clouds,Far in the twilight West, seen through some deepEmbrowned grove of venerable trees,Whose pillared stems, apart, but regular,Stand off against the sky: In such a grove,At such an hour, permitted eyes might seeAngels, majestic Shapes, walking the earth,Holding mild converse for the good of man.Day melts into the West, another flakeOf sweet blue Time into the Eternal Past!
Morning.
Dear little Isle of ours! your very clouds,Ranged in the east and battlemented black,White flock of zenith, or, with stormy glory,Tumbling tumultuous o’er the western hills,Lend power and beauty to your pictured face,Relieved and deepened in its light and shade,Varied of dale and mountain, pleasing stillThrough all the seasons, as they come and go,—Blue airy Summer, Autumn brown and grave,Gnarled sapless Winter, and clear glinting Spring.
Mine be the cottage, large enough for use,Yet fully occupied, and cheerful thus.Desolate he who, with his means abridged,And wants reduced, yet pride of propertyStill unimpaired, dwells in a narrow flank;Of his ancestral house, gloomily vastBeyond his need,—dwells with the faded ghostOf former greatness. There the bellied spider,That works in cool and silent palaces,Has halls his own. The labyrinthine roomsSeem haunted all. Mysterious laden airsMove the dim tapestries drearily. And shapesSpectral at hollow midnight beckoning glideDown the far corridors, and faint away.
Up with the summer sun! Earlier at times,And see gray brindled dawn come up before him;There’s natural health, there’s moral healing inThe hour so naked clear, so dewy cool!But oft I wish a chamber in the blackCastle of Indolence, far in, where sparkOf prying light ne’er comes, nor sound of cockIs heard, nor the long howl of houseless cur,Nor clock, nor shrill-winged gnat, nor buzzing flyThat, by the snoring member undeterred,Aye settles on your nose’s tickled tipTormentingly. Deep in that charmèd restLaid, I could sleep the weary world away,Months at a time—so listless fancy thinks.
Oh! curse of sleeplessness! Haggard and pale,The tyrant Nero, see him from his bedWandering about, haunting the long dim halls,And silent stairs, at midnight, startled oftAt his own footsteps, like a guilty thingSharp turning round aghast. The palace sleeps,And all the city sleeps, all save its lord.Then looks he to the windows of the east,Wearily watching for the morning light,That comes not at his will. Down on his bedHe flings himself again. His eyeballs ache;His temples throb; his pillow’s hot and hard;And through his dried brain thoughts and feelings drift,Tumultuous, unrestrained, carrying his soulOn the high fever’s surge. The imperial worldFor one short dewy hour of healing sleep!Worlds cannot buy the blessing. Up he reels,And staggers forth. Slow-coming day at lengthHas found him thus. Its living busy forms,Its turms, its senators, its gorgeous guests,Bowing in homage from barbaric isles,Its scenes, its duties are to him a strangePhantasmagoria: Through its ghastly lightWildered he lives. To feel and be assuredHe yet has hold on being, with the drugsOf monstrous pleasures, cruelty and lust,He drugs his spirit; ever longing stillFor the soft hour of eve, if sleep may comeAfter another day has worn him out.But images of black, bed-fellows strange,Lie down with him; drawing his curtain back,Unearthly shapes, and unimagined faces,Look in upon him, near down on his eyes,Nearer and nearer still, till they are forcedTo wink beneath the infliction, like a weightOf actual pressure, solid, heavy, felt.But winking hard, a thousand coloured motesBegin to dance confused, and central stars,And spots of light, welling and widening outIn rings concentric, peopling all the blindBlack vacancy before his burning balls.But soon they change to leering antic shapes,And dread-suggesting fiends. Dim, far away,Long dripping corpses, swaying in the waves,Slowly cast up, arise; gashed, gory throats,And headless trunks of men, are nearer seen,And every form of tragic butchery—The myriad victims of his power abusedBy sea and land. To give their hideousnessDue light, a ceiling of clear molten fire,Figured with sprawling imps, begins to glowHot overhead, casting a brazen lightDown on the murdered crew. All bent on him,Near, nearer still, they swarm, they crowd, they press;And round and round, and through and through the rout,The naked Pleasures, knit with demons, dance.Wild whirls his brain anew. This night is asThe last, and far more terrible. Guilt thus,And sleeplessness, more than perpetuateEach other—dreadful lineage! Let us hope,For human nature, that the man was mad.
Up from your blameless sleep, go forth and meetThe glistening morn, over the smoking lawnSpangled, by briery balks, and brambled lanes,Where blows the dog-rose, and the honey-suckleHangs o’er the heavy hedge its trailing sheafOf stems and leaves, tendrils and clasping rings,Cold dews, and bugle blooms, and honey smells,And wild bees swinging as they murmur there.The speckled thrush, startled from off the thorn,Shakes down the crystal drops. With spurring haste,The rabbit scuds across the grassy path;Pauses a moment—with its form and earsArrect to listen; then, with glimpse of white,Springs through the hedge into the ferny brake.Or taste the freshness of the pastoral hillsOn such a morn: Light scarfs of thinning mistIn graceful lingerings round their shoulders hang;New-washed and white, the sheep go nibbling upThe high green slopes; a hundred gurgling rills,Sparkling with foam-bells, to your very heartSend their delicious coolness; hark! again,The cuckoo somewhere in the sunny skirtsOf yonder patch of the old natural woods;With sudden iron croak, clear o’er the graySummit, o’erhanging you, with levell’d flight,The raven shoots into the deep blue air.
Lo! in the confluence of the mountain glens,The small gray ruin of an ancient kirk.’Twas the first kirk, so faithful reverence tells,Of Scotland’s Reformation: And it drew,Now as before, from all the hills aroundThe worshippers; till, in a richer vale,To suit the populous hamlet rising there,A larger, nearer parish church was built.Thus was the old one left. But there it stands,And there will stand till the slow tooth of TimeNibble it all away; for it is fencedCompletely round, not with just awe alone,But superstitious fears, the abuse of aweIn simple minds: Strange judgments, so they say,Have fallen on those who once or twice have daredTo lay their hands upon its holy stonesFor secular uses, and remove its bell.With such excess of love—we’ll blame it not—Does Scotland love her Church. Be it so stillAnd be its emblem still the Burning Bush!Bush of the wilderness! See how the flamesBicker and burn around it; but a lowSoft breath of the great Spirit of SalvationBlows gracious by, and the dear little Bush,The desert Bush, in every freshened leafUncurled, unsinged in every flowery bud,Fragrant with heavenly dews, and dropping balsamsGood for the hurt soul’s healing, waves and rustles,Even in the very heart of the red burning,In livelier green and fairer blossoming.
Earth sends her soft warm incense up to heaven;The birds their matins sing. Joining the hymn,The tremulous voice of psalms from human lipsIs heard in the free air. You wonder where,And who the worshippers. Behold them now,Down in the grassy hollow lowly seated,Close by the mountain burn—an old gray man,His head uncovered, and the Book of lifeSpread on his knee, a female by his side,His aged wife, both beggars by their garb,With frail cracked voices, yet with hearts attunedTo the immortal harmonies of faith,And hope, and love, in the green wildernessPraising the Lord their God—a touching sight!High in the Heavenly House not made with hands,The archangels sing, angels, and saints in white,Striking their golden harps before the Throne;But, in the pauses of the symphonyA voice comes up from Earth, the simple psalmOf those old beggars, heard by the Ear of GodWith more acceptance than hosannahs sungIn blissful jubilee. ’Tis hard to thinkThe people of the Lord must beg their bread;Yet happy they who, poor as this old twainOn earth, like them, have laid fast titled holdUpon the treasures of Eternity!
Her nest is here: But ah! the cunning thing,See where our White-throat, like the partridge, feignsA broken wing, thick fluttering o’er the ground,And tumbling oft, to draw you from her broodWithin the bush. Now that’s a lie, my birdie!Your wing’s not broken; but we’ll grant you this,—The lie’s a white one, white as your own throat.Yet how should He who is the Truth itself,And whose unquestioned prompting instinct is,Implant deceit within your little breast,And make you act it, even to save your young?The whole creation groans for man, for sin,And death its consequence: We’re changed to youIn our relations, birdie; as a partOf that primeval ill, we rob your nest.To meet this change, and in God’s own permissionOf moral wrong, was it, that guile was givenEven to the truest instinct of your love;And your deceit is our reflected sin?Subtle philosopher, or sound divine,’Tis a grave question; can you answer it?The more we wonder at the curious warpFrom truth, the more we see the o’erruling lawOf natural love in all things, which will beA fraud in instinct, rather than a flawIn care parental. Oh! how gracious good,That all the generations, as they rise,Of living things are not sustained by oneGreat abstract fiat of Benevolence;But by a thousand separate forms of love,All tremblingly alive: The human heart,With all its conduits and its channel-pipes,Warm, flowing, full, quiveringly keen and strongIn all its tendrils and its bloody threads,Laying hold of its children with the fastBands of a man; fish, bird, beast, reptile, insect,The wallowing, belching monsters of the deep,Down to the filmiest people of the leaf,Are all God’s nurses, and draw out the breast,Or brood for Him. Oh! what a system thusOf active love, of every shape and kind,Has been created, from the Heart of HeavenExtended, multiplied, personifiedIn living forms throughout the Universe!
In life’s first glee, and first untutored grace,With raven tresses, and with glancing eyes,How beautiful those children, lustrous dark,Pulling the kingcups in the flowery meadow!Born of an Indian Mother: She by night,An orphan damsel on her native hills,Looked down the Khyber Pass, with pity touchedFor the brave strangers that lay slain in heaps,Low in that fatal fold and pen of death.Sorrow had taught her mercy: Forth she wentWith simple cordials from her lonely cot,If she might help to save some wounded foe.By cavern went she, and tall ice-glazed rock,Casting its spectral shadow on the snow,Beneath the hard blue moon. Save her own feetCrushing the starry spangles of the frost,Sound there was none on all the silent hills;And silence filled the valley of the dead.Down went the maid aslant. A cliff’s recessGave forth a living form. A wounded youth,One unit relic of that thick battue,Escaping death, and mastering his deep hurt,From out the bloody Pass had climbed thus farThe mountain side, and rested there a while.The virgin near, up rose he heavily,Staggered into the light, and stood before her,Bowing for help. She gave him sweet-spiced milk,And led him to her home, and hid him thereMonths, till pursuit was o’er, and he was healed,And from her mountains he could safely go.But grateful Walter loved the Affghan girl,And would not go without her: They had taughtEach other language: Will she go with himTo the Isles of the West, and be his wife?Nor less she loved the fair-haired islander,And softly answered, Yes. And she is nowHis Christian wife, wondering and loving muchIn this mild land, honoured and loved of all;With such a grace of glad humilityShe does her duties. And, to crown her joyOf holy wedded life, her God has given herThose beauteous children, with the laughing voices,Pulling the kingcups in the flowery meadow.
Our walk is o’er. But let us see our bees,Before we turn into our ivied porch.The little honey-folk, how wise are they!Their polity, their industry, their work,The help they take from man, and what they give himOf fragrant nectar, sea-green, clear, and sweet,Invest them almost with the dignityOf human neighbourhood, without the intrusion.Coming and going, what a hum and stir!The dewy morn they love, the sunny day,With showery dropping balms, liquoring the flowersIn every vein and eye. But when the heavensGrow cloudy, and the quick-engendered blastsDarken and whiten as they skiff alongThe mountain-tops, till all the nearer air,Seized with the gloom, is turbid, dense, and cold,Back from their far-off foraging the bees,In myriads, saddened into small black motes,Strike through the troubled air, sharp past your head,And almost hitting you, their lines of flightConverging, thickening, as they draw near home;So much they fear the storms, so much they loveThe safety of their straw-built citadels.
Noon.
At times a bird slides through the glossy air,O’er the enamelled woodlands; but no chirpOf song is heard: All’s dumb and panting heat.How waste and idle are yon river sands,Far-stretching white! The stream is almost shrunkDown to the green gleet of its slippery stones;And in it stand the cows, switching their tails,With circling drops, and ruminating slow.A hermit glutton on a sodded root,Fish-gorged, his head and bill sunk to his breast,The lean blue heron stands, and there will standMotionless all the long dull afternoon.
But the old woods are near, with grateful glooms,Dells, silent grottoes, and cold sunken wells;There rest on mossy seats, and be refreshed:Thankful you toil not, at this blazing hour,Beneath the dog-star, in some sandy laneOf the strait sea-coast town, pent closely inWith walls of fiery brick, their tops stuck o’erWith broken pointed glass, and danders hotFencing their feet, with sparse ears of wild barleyParched, dun, and dead amongst them; o’er your headThe smoke of potteries, and the foundry ventSending its quivering exhalation up—Heat more than smoke; to aggravate the whole,The sweltering, smothering, suffocating whole,The oppressive sense upon your heart of man’sWorst dwellings round you—smells of stinking fish,Torn dingy shirts, half washed, flea-spotted still,Hung out on bending strings at broken windows;Hunger, and fear, and pale disordered faces,Lies, drunken strife, strokes, cries, and new-coined oaths,All hot and rough from the red mint of hell.
Lo! with her screwed tail cocked aloft in air,The cottar’s cow comes scampering clumsily.Her, sorely cupped and leeched, the clegs have stungFrom her propriety; and hoisting highHer standard of distress, this way she comesCantering unwieldily, her heavy udder,Dropping out milk, swinging from side to side.Pathetic sight! So long have we been usedTo see the solemn tenor of her life,From calfhood to her present reverend ageOf wrinkled front, scored horns, and hollow back,—Tenor unbroken, save when once or twiceA pool of frothy blood before the smithyHas made her snuff, snort, paw, and toss her head,Wheel round and round, and slavering bellow mad:That blood the cadger’s horse, seized with the bots,When he on cobwebbed clover, raw and cold,Had supped, gave spouting, spinning from his neck,Beneath the blacksmith’s mallet and his fleam.Is this the cow, at home so patient o’erThe cool sobriety of cabbage leaves,Hoarse cropped for her at morn, when the night-dropsLie like big diamonds in the freshened stock,—Drops broken, running, scattered, but againConglobed like quicksilver, until they fallShaken to earth? Is this the milky mother,That long has given to thankful squeezing hands,With such an air of steady usefulness,The children’s streaming food—twelve pints a day;And with her butter, and her cheese, and cansOf white-green whey, has bought the grocery goods,Snuff and tobacco? Oh! the affecting sight!Help, help, ye Shades, the venerable brute!But gradually subsiding to a trot,She takes the river with a fellow-feeling,And, modestly aloof to raise no strife,There settles down behind the stranger cows.Ah! Crummie, you have stolen this scampering marchUpon the little cow-herd. Far are heardThe opening roarings of his wondering fear,Nearer and nearer still, as they come on,Loading the noontide air. Three other friendsHad he to feed, besides the family cow.Twin cushats young, the yellow hair now sparseIn their thick gathering plumage, nestling lieWithin his bonnet; they can snap, and strikeWith raised wing; grown vigorous thus, they needA larger dinner of provided peas.Nor less his hawk, shrill-screaming as it shakesIts wings for food, must have the knotted wormsFrom moist cold beds below the unwholesome stone,That never has been raised—if he be quickTo raise it, and can seize them ere they slinkInto their holes, or, when half in, can draw them,With a long, steady, gentle, equal pull,Tenacious though they be, and tender stretchedTill every rib seems ready to give way,Unbroken out in all their slippery length.These now he wandered seeking, for the groundWas parched, and they the surface all had left;And many a stone he raised, but nothing saw,Save insect eggs, and shells of beetles’ wings,Slaters, cocoons, and yellow centipedes.Thus was he drawn away. When he came back,His cow was gone. Dismayed, he looked all round.At last he saw, far-off on the horizon,Her hoisted tail. He seized his birds and ran,Following the tail, and as he ran he roared.Yonder he comes in view with red-hot face;Roaring the more to see old Crummie takeThe river—how shall he dislodge her thence;And get her home again? Oh! deep distress!
The world is flooded with the dazzling day.We take the woods. Couched in the checkered skirts,Below an elm we lie. A sylvan streamIs sleeping by us in a cold still pool,Within whose glassy depth the little fishesHang, as in crystal air. Freckled with gleams,’Neath yonder hazelly bank that roofs it o’erWith roots and moss, it slides and slips away.Here a ray’d spot of light, intensely clear,Strikes our eyes through the leaves; a sunbeam thereComes slanting in between the mossy trunksOf the green trees, and misty shimmering fallsWith a long slope down on the glossy ferns:Light filmy flies athwart it brightening shoot,Or dance and hover in the motty ray.
We love the umbrageous Elm. Its well-crimp’d leaf,Serrated, fresh, and rough as a cow’s tongue,Is healthy, natural, and cooling, farBeyond the glazy polish of the bay,Famed though it be, but glittering hard as if’Twere liquor’d o’er with some metallic wash.Thus pleased, laid back, up through the Elm o’erheadWe look. The little Creeper of the TreeLends life to it: See how the antic bird,Her bosom to the bark, goes round awayBehind the trunk, but quaintly reappearsThrough a rough cleft above, with busy billPicking her lunch; and now among the leavesOur birdie goes, bright glimmering in the greenAnd yellow light that fills the tender tree.
Low o’er the burnie bends the drooping Birch:Fair tree! Though oft its cuticle of barkHangs in white fluttering tatters on its breast,No fairer twinkles in the dewy glade.Sweet is its scented breath, the wild deer loves it,And snuffs and browses at the budding spray.But far more tempting to the truant’s eyes,Wandering the woods, its thick excrescencesOf bundled matted sprigs: Soft steals he on,To find what seems afar the cushat’s nest,Or pie’s or crow’s. Deceived, yet if the treeIs old, he seeks in its decaying cleftsThe fungous cork-wood that gives balls to boys,And smooth-skinn’d razor-strops to bearded men.Bent all on play, our little urchin nextPeels off a bit of bark, and with his nailsSplits and divides the many-coated rindTo the last outer thinness; then he holdsThe silky shivering film between his lips,And pipes and whistles, mimicking the thrush.
Nor less the Beauty of our natural woodsIs useful too. What time the housewife’s pirn(Oh, cheerless change that stopp’d the birring wheel!)Whirled glimmering round before the evening fire,’Twas birchen aye. And when our tough-heel’d shoesHave stood the tear and wear of stony hillsBeyond our hope, we bless the birchen pegs.In Norway o’er the foam, their crackling firesAre fed with bark of birch, and there they thatchTheir simple houses with its pliant twigs.At home, the virtues of our civic besomsConfess the birch. The Master of the SchoolIs now “abroad:” Oh! may he never miss,Wander where’er he will, the birchen shaw,But cut the immemorial ferula,To lay in pickle for rebellious imps,And discipline to worth the British youth.
The Queen can make a Duke; but cannot makeOne of the forest’s old Aristocrats.Behold yon Oak! What glory in his bole,His boughs, his branches, his broad frondent head!The ancient Nobleman! Not She who rulesThe kingdoms, many-isled, on which the sunNever goes down, with all the investitureOf garters, coronets, scutcheons, swords, and stars,Could make him there at once. Patrician! Nay,King of the woods, his independent realm!Whate’er his titled name, there let him stand,Fit emblem of our British constitution,Full constituted in the rooted Past,With powers, and forces, and accommodations,The growth of ages, not an act or work!Beyond this emblem of old diguity,And far beyond the associated thoughtOf “Hearts of Oak,” that mightiest incarnationOf human power that earth has ever seen—As when we launch’d our Nelson, and he wentThundering around the world, driving the foe,With all their banded hosts, from hemisphereTo hemisphere, before him, by the terrorOf his tremendous name, but overtookAnd thunder-smote them down, swept from the seas,—Beyond all this, the reverend Oak takes backThe heart to elder days of holy awe.Such oaks are they, the hoariest of the race,Round Lochwood Tower, the Johnstones’ ancient seat.Bow’d down with very age, and rough all o’erWith scurfy moss, and the depending hairOf parasitic plants, (the mistletoe,Be sure, is there, congenial friend of old,)They look as if no lively little birdDurst hop upon their spirit-awing heads:Perhaps, at midnight hour, Minerva’s bird,The grave, staid owl, may rest a moment there.But solemn visions swarm on every bough,Of Druid doings in old dusky time.
When lowers the thunder cloud, and all the treesStand black and still, with what a trump profoundThe wild bee wanders by! But here he is,Hoarse murmuring in the fox-glove’s weigh’d-down bell.Happy in sumner he! but when the daysOf later autumn come, they’ll find him hangingIn torpid stupor, on the horse-knot’s top;Or by the ragweed in the school-boy’s hand,As forth he issues, angry from his bike,Struck down, he’ll die—what time the urchins, bentOn honey, delve into the solid ground:They seize the yellower and the cleaner comb,But drop it quick, when squeezing it they findNought there but milky maggots; then they pickThe darker bits, and suck them, though they beWild, bitter flavoured, in their luscious strength,And dirty brown, and mix’d with earthen mould.The luckier mower in the grassy mead,Turns up with his scythe’s point, or with its edge,The foggie’s bike, a ball of soft, dry fog.With what a sharp, thin, acrid, pent-up buzz,Swarming, it lives and stirs! But when the beesAre all dislodged, and, circling, wheel away,The swain rejoices in that bright clean honey.
Ah! there’s Miss Kitty Wren, with her cocked tail,Cocked like a cooper’s thumb. Miss Kitty goesIn ’neath the bank, and then comes out againBy some queer hole. Thus, all the day she pliesHer quest from hedge to bank, scarce ever seenFlying above your head in open air.Unsmitten by the heat where now she is,She strikes into her song—Miss Kitty’s song!(We never think of male in Kitty’s case.)The song is short, and varies not, but yet’Tis not monotonous; with such a pipeOf liquid clearness does she open it,And, with increasing vigour, to the endGo through it quite: Thus, all the year, she sings,Except in frost, the spunky little bird!On mossy stump of thorn, her curious nestIs often built, a twig drawn over it,To bind it firm; but more she loves the roofOf sylvan cave over-arched, where the green twilightGlimmers with golden light, and fox-gloves stand,Tall, purple-faced, her goodly beef-eaters,To guard and dignify her entrance-gate.The ballad vouches that a wee, wee birdOft brings a whispered message to the ear;So here’s our ear, Miss Wren, (your pardon! weMust call you Mrs now,) pray, tell us howYou manage, in your crowded little house,To feed your thirteen young, nor miss one mouthIn its due turn, but give them all fair play?And here’s our other ear; say, ere you go,What means the Bachelor’s Nest? ’Tis oftener foundThan the true finished one. Externally,’Tis built as well; but ne’er we find withinThe cozy feathery lining for the homeOf love parental. Is it, as some think,And as the name, though not precise, implies,Made for your husband, whosoe’er he be,To sleep o’nights in? Or, as others deem,Is it a lure to draw the loiterer’s eyeOff from the genuine nest, not far away?Or, shy and nice, were you disturbed in building;Or by some other instinct, fine and true,Impelled to change your first-projected place,And choose a safer? This your Laureate holds.
But here comes Robin. In our boyish days,We thought him Kitty’s husband. By his clearBlack eye, he’s fit to answer for himself.Like her, he sings the whole year round; but sheIs not his wife. See how he turns the headThis way and that, peeping from out the leavesWith curious eye, and still comes hopping nearer.Strong in his individual character,His knowing glance, his shape, his waistcoat red,His pipe mellifluous, and pugnacious pride,Darting to strike intruders from his beat,And other qualities, his love of manIs still his great peculiarity.The starved hedge-sparrow haunts the moistened sink,On gurly winter days, the bitter windRuffling her back, showing the bluer downBeneath her feathers freckled brown above,But ne’er she ventures nearer where man dwells.With sidelong look, bold Robin takes our floor;And when, as now, we rest us in the depthsOf leafy woods, he’s with us in a trice.Such is the genius of red-breasted Robin.
Along the shingly shallows of the burn,The smallest bird that walks, and does not hop,How fast yon Wagtail runs; its little feetQuick as a mouse’s! Thus its shaking tailIs kept in even balance, poised and straight.With hopping movements ’twould not harmonise,But, wagging inconveniently more,Mar and confound the bird’s progressive way,When off the wing. Wisdom Divine contrivedThe just proportions of this compromiseBetwixt the motions of the feet and tail.Aloft in air, each chirrup keeping timeWith each successive undulation long,The Wagtail flies, a pleasant summer bird.
A moment on the elm above our headRests the Green-linnet. Wordsworth says, He “fromThe cottage-eaves pours forth his song in gushes.”Not so in Scotland: Here he sometimes buildsHis nest within the garden’s beechen hedge;But never haunts our eaves. As for his song,A few short notes, meagre and harsh, are allThis somewhat spiritless and lumpish birdHas ever given us. Can the Master err?
With all the short thick rowing of her wingsThe Magpie makes slow way. But her glib tongueGoes chattering fast enough. In yonder fir,The summer solstice cannnot keep her mute.Surely, the bird should speak: Take the young pie,And with a silver sixpence split its tongue,’Twill speak incontinent; thus the notion runsFrom simple father down to simple son,In many parts. Oft in our boyhood’s daysWe’ve seen it tried; but somehow, by bad luck,It always happened that the poor bird died,When, doubtless, just upon the eve of speech.Sore was the splitting then, but far worse now:The sixpence then, worn till it lost the headOf George the Third, was thin as a knife’s edge,And fitly sharp; the coin’s now thick and dull,And makes the clumsier cleaving full of pain.As boys we feared the magpie, for ’twas heldA bird of omen: oft ’twas seen to tearWith mad extravagant bill the cottage thatch,Herald of death within: To neighbouring townsThe schoolboy, sent on morning messages,Counted with awe how many pies at onceHopped on his road; by this he learned to knowThe various fortunes of the coming time.
Sweet lore was yours, O Bewick! with that eyeSo keen, yet quiet, for the Beautiful,And for the Droll—that eye so loving large!Yet sweeter, Wilson, yours, as yours a rangeMore ample far, watching the goings-onOf Nature in the boundless solitudes.We know no happier man than him, at once,With native powers, fixed from a restless youth,To a great work congenial, which his mightOf conscious will has mastered ere begun;Life’s work, and the foundation of his fame:But oh! its sweetness, if in Nature’s eyeHis is the privilege to work it out!Such was the work of Wilson. Happy, too,Is Audubon. When Day, like a bright bird,Throughout the heavens has flown, chased by the blackFalcon of Night, he sleeps beneath a tree;Upspringing with the morn, the enthusiast holdsOn his green way rejoicing: His to catch,And fix the creatures of the wildernessIn pictured forms, not in the attitudesOf stiff convenience, but in all their playOf happy natural life, fearless, untamedBy man’s intrusion, wanton, easy, free,Yet full of tart peculiarities,Freakish, and quaint, and ever picturesque,Their secret gestures, and the wild escapesFrom out their eyes; watching how Nature worksHer fine frugalities of means, even thereWhere all is lavish freedom, finer still,The compensations of her processes,Throughout their whole economy of life.Sweet study! Oh! for one long summer dayWith Audubon in the far Western woods!
We leave the shade, and take the open fields,Winding our way by immemorial paths,So soft and green, the poor man’s privilege:May jealous freedom ever keep them free!Such is the sultry languor of the day,The eye sees nothing clear. But now it restsOn yonder sable patch—ah! yes, a bandOf mourners gathered round a closing grave,In the old churchyard. How unnaturalThe black solemnity in such a dayOf light and life! But who was he or sheWho thus goes dust to dust? A matron ripeIn years and grace at once for death and Heaven.Her aged father’s stay until he died,She then was wed and widowed in one year,And made a mother. With her infant sonShe dwelt in peace, and nourished him with love.Mild and sedate, upgrew the old-fashioned boy;And went to church with her, a little manIn garb and gravity: you would have smiledTo see him coming in. She lifted himUp to his seat beside her, drew him near,And took his hand in hers. There as he sate,Oft looked she down to see if he was sleeping;And drowsy half, half in the languor softOf innocent trust and aimless piety,The child looked up into his mother’s face.And she looked down into his eyes, and sawThe neighbouring window in their pupils’ balls,With all its panes, reflected small but clear;And gave his hand soft pressure with her hand,Still shifting, trying still to be more soft.God took him from her. In a holy stillnessShe dwelt concentred. Decent were her means,And so she changed not outwardly. No troubleGave she to neighbours; but she helped them oft.And when she died, her grave-clothes, there they were,Made by her own preparing heart and hand,And neatly folded in an antique chest:Not even a pin was wanting, where, to dressHer body with due care, a pin should be;And every pin was stuck in its own place.Nor was all this from any hard mistrustOf human love, for she the charitiesTook with glad heart; but from a strength of mindWhich stood equipped in every point for death,And, loving order, loved it to the end.
The mourners all are gone. How lonely stillThe churchyard now! Here in their simple gravesThe generations of the hamlet sleep:All grassy simple, save that, here and there,Love-planted flowerets deck the lowly sod.Blame not that sorrowing love: ’Tis far too trueTo make of Burial one of the Fine Arts;Yet the sweet thought that scented violets springFrom the loved ashes, is a natural warAgainst the foul dishonours of the grave.Bloom then, ye little flowers, and sweetly smell;Draw up the heart’s dust in your flushing hues,And odorous breath, and give it to the bee,And give it to the air, circling to goFrom life to life, through all that living fluxOf interchange which makes this wondrous world.Go where it will, the dear dust is not lost;Found it will be in its own place and form,On that great day, the Resurrection Day.
Evening.
Those shouts proclaim the village school is out.This way and that, the children break in groups;Some by the sunny stile, and meadow path,Slow sauntering homeward; others to the burnBounding, beneath the stones, and roots, and banks,With stealthy hand to catch the spotted trout,Or stab the eel, or slip their noose of hairOver the bearded loach, and jerk him out.Here on his donkey, slow as any snailAt morn from the far farm, but, homeward now,Willing and fast, an urchin blithe and boldComes scampering on: His face is to the tailIn fun grotesque; stooping, with both his handsHe holds the hairy rump; his kicking feetGo walloping; his empty flask of tin,That bore his noon of milk, quiver of life,And not of death, high-bounding on his back,Rattles the while. With many a whoop behind,Scouring the dusty road with their bare feet,In wicked glee, a squad of fellow-impsCome on with thistles and with nettle-wands,Pursuingly, intent to goad and vexThe long-eared cuddy: He, the cuddy, laysHis long ears back upon his neck, his headLowered the while, and out behind him flingsHigh his indignant heels, at once to keepThat hurly-burly of tormentors off,And rid his back of that insulting rider.
Unconscious boyhood! Oh! the perils nearOf luring Pleasures! In the evening shade,Drowsy reclining, in my dream I sawA comely youth, with wanton flowing curls,Chase down the sunlit vale a glittering flightOf winged creatures, some like birds, and someLike butterflies, and moths of marvellous sizeAnd beauty, purple-ruffed, and spotted richWith velvet tippets, and their wings like flame—Onward they drew him to a coming cloud,With skirts of vapoury gold, but steaming denseAnd dark behind, close gathering from the ground:And on and in he went, in heedless chase.And straight those skirts curled inward, and becamePart of the gloom: Compacted, solid, black,It has him in, and it will keep him there.The cloud stood still a space, as if to giveTime for the acting of some doom within,Ominous, silent, grim. It moved again,Tumultuous stirred, and broke in seams and flaws,And gave me glimpses of its inner womb:Outdarting forkèd tongues, and brazen fins,Blue web-winged vampire-bats, and harpy faces,And dragon crests, and vulture heads obscene,I there beheld: Fierce were their levelled looks,As if inflicted on some victim. WhoThat victim was, I saw not. But are theseThe painted Pleasures which that youth pursuedAdown the vale? How cruel changed! But where,And what is he? Is he their victim there?Heavy the cloud went passing by. From outIts further end I saw that young man come,Worn and dejected; specks and spots of dirtWere on his face, and round his sunken eyes;Hollow his cheeks, lean were his bony brows;And lank and clammy were the locks that oncePlayed curling round his neck: The Passions thereHave done their work on him. With trembling limbs,And stumbling as he went, he sate him down,With folded arms, upon a sombre hill,Apart from men, and from his father’s house,That wept from him; and, sitting there, he lookedWith heavy-laden eyes down on the ground.But the night fell, and hid him from my view.
In yonder sheltered nook of nibbled sward,Beside the wood, a gipsy band are camped;And there they’ll sleep the summer night away.By stealthy holes, their ragged tawny broodCreep through the hedges, in their pilfering questOf sticks and pales, to make their evening fire.Untutored things, scarce brought beneath the lawsAnd meek provisions of this ancient State!Yet, is it wise, with wealth and power like hers,And such resources of good government,To let so many of her sons grow upIn untaught darkness and consecutive vice?True, we are jealous free, and hate constraint,And every cognisance o’er private life;Yet, not to name a higher principle,’Twere but an institution of police,Due to society, preventativeOf crime, the cheapest and the best supportOf order, right, and law, that not one child,In all this realm of ours, should be allowedTo grow up uninstructed for this life,And for the next. Were every child State-claimed,Laid hold of thus, and thus prepared to beA proper member of society,What founts of vice, with all their issuing streams,Might thus be closed for ever, and at once!Good propagating good, so far as manCan work with God. Oh! this is the great workTo change our moral world, and people Heaven.
Would we had Christian statesmen to devise,And shape, and work it out! Our libertiesHave limits and abatements manifold;And soon the national will, which makes restraintPart of its freedom, oft the soundest part,Would recognise the wisdom of the plan,Arming the state with full authorityFor such an institute of renovation.This work achieved at home, with what a largeConsistent exercise of power, and rightTo hope the blessing, should we then go forth,Pushing into the dark of Heathen worldsThe crystal frontiers of the invading Light,The Gospel Light! The glad submitting EarthWould cry, Behold, their own land is a landOf perfect living light—how beautifulUpon the mountains are their blessed feet!
Through yonder meadow comes the milk-maid’s song,Clear, but not blithe, a melancholy chaunt,With dying falls monotonous; for youthAffects the dark and sad: Her ditty tellsOf captive lorn, or broken-hearted maid,Left of her lover, but in dream thrice dreamtWarned of his fate, when, with his fellow-crewOf ghastly sailors on benighted seasHe clings to some black, wet, and slippery rock,Soon to be washed away; what time their ship,Driven on the whirlpool’s wheel, is sent below,And ground upon the millstones of the sea.The song has ceased. Up the dim elmy laneThe damsel comes. But at its leafy mouthThe one dear lad has watched her entering in,And with her now comes softly side by side.But oft he plucks a leaf from off the hedge,For lack of words, in bashful love sincere;Till, in his innocent freedom bolder grown,He crops a dewy gowan from the path,And greatly daring flings it at her cheek.Close o’er the pair, along the green arcade,Now hid, now seen against the evening sky,The wavering, circling, sudden-wheeling batPlays little Cupid, blind enough for that,And fitly fickle in his flights to beThe very Boy-god’s self. Where’er may lieThe power of arrows with the golden tips,That silent lad is smit, nor less that girlIs cleft of heart: Be this the token true:—Next Sabbath morn, when o’er the pasture hillsBarefoot she comes to church, with Bible wrappedIn clean white napkin, and the sprig of mintAnd southernwood laid duly in the leaves,And down she sits beside the burn to washHer feet, and don her stockings and her shoes,Before she come unto the House of Prayer,With all her reverence of the Day, she’ll cast(Forgive the simple thing!) her eye askanceInto the mirror of the glassy pool,And give her ringlets the last taking touch,For him who flung the gowan at her cheekIn that soft twilight of the elmy lane.
Pensive the setting Day, whether, as nowCloudless it fades away, or far is seen,In long and level parallels of light,Purple and liquid yellow, barred with clouds,Far in the twilight West, seen through some deepEmbrowned grove of venerable trees,Whose pillared stems, apart, but regular,Stand off against the sky: In such a grove,At such an hour, permitted eyes might seeAngels, majestic Shapes, walking the earth,Holding mild converse for the good of man.
Day melts into the West, another flakeOf sweet blue Time into the Eternal Past!
Dumfries,May 18, 1846.