The Luggie.

TTHAT impulse which all beauty gives the soulIs languaged as I sing. For fairer streamRolled never golden sand unto the sea,Made sweeter music than the Luggie, gloom’dBy glens whose melody mingles with her own.The uttered name my inmost being thrills,A word beyond a charm; and if this layCould smoothly flow along and wind to the endIn natural manner, as the Luggie windsHer tortuous waters, then the world would listIn sweet enthralment, swallowed up and lost,As he who hears the music that beguiles.For as the pilgrim on warm summer daysPacing the dusty highway, when he seesThe limpid silver glide with liquid lapseBetween the emerald banks—with inward throeBlesses the clear enticement and partakes,(His hot face meeting its own counterpartShadowy, from an unvoyageable sky)So would the people in these later daysListen the singing of a country song,A virelay of harmless homeliness;These later days, when in most bookish rhymes,Dear blessed Nature is forgot, and lostHer simple unelaborate modesty.And unto thee, my friend! thou prime of soul’Mong men; I gladly bring my firstborn song!Would it were worthier for thy noble sake,True poet and true English gentleman!Thy favours flattered me, thy praise inspired:Thy utter kindness took my heart, and nowThy love alleviates my slow decline.Beneath an ash in beauty tender leaved,And thro’ whose boughs the glimmering sunshine flow’dIn rare ethereal jasper, making coolA chequered shadow in the dark-green grass,I lay enchanted. At my head there bloomedA hedge of sweet-brier, fragrant as the breathOf maid belovëd when her cheek is laidTo yours in downy pressure, soft as sleep.A bank of harebells, flowers unspeakableFor half-transparent azure, nodding, gleamedAs a faint zephyr, laden with perfume,Kissed them to motion, gently, with no will.Before me streams most dear unto my heart,Sweet Luggie, sylvan Bothlin—fairer twainThan ever sung themselves into the sea,Lucid Ægean, gemmed with sacred isles—Were rolled together in an emerald vale;And into the severe bright noon, the smokeIn airy circles o’er the sycamoresUpcurled—a lonely little cloud of blueAbove the happy hamlet. Far away,A gently-rising hill with umbrage clad,Hazel and glossy birch and silver fir,Met the keen sky. Oh, in that wood, I know,The woodruff and the hyacinth are fairIn their own season; with the bilberryOf dim and misty blue, to childhood dear.Here, on a sunny August afternoon,A vision stirred my spirit half-awakeTo fling a purer lustre on those fieldsThat knew my boyish footsteps; and to singThy pastoral beauty, Luggie, into fame.Now, while the nights are long, by the dear hearthOf home I write; and ere the mavis trillsHis smooth notes from the budding boughs of March,While the red windy morning o’er the eastWidens, or while the lowly sky of eveBurns like a topaz;—all the dear designMay reach completion, married to my songAs far as words can syllable desire.May yet the inspiration and delightThat proved my soul on that Autumnal day,Be with me now, while o’er the naked earthHushfully falls the soft, white, windless snow!Once more, O God, once more before I die,Before blind darkness and the wormy graveContain me, and my memory fades awayLike a sweet-coloured evening, slowly sad—Once more, O God, thy wonders take my soul.A winter day! the feather-silent snowThickens the air with strange delight, and laysA fairy carpet on the barren lea.No sun, yet all around that inward lightWhich is in purity,—a soft moonshine,The silvery dimness of a happy dream.How beautiful! afar on moorland ways,Bosomed by mountains, darkened by huge glens,(Where the lone altar raised by Druid handsStands like a mournful phantom), hidden cloudsLet fall soft beauty, till each green fir branchIs plumed and tassel’d, till each heather stalkIs delicately fringed. The sycamores,Thro’ all their mystical entanglementOf boughs, are draped with silver. All the greenOf sweet leaves playing with the subtle airIn dainty murmuring; the obstinate droneOf limber bees that in the monkshood bellsHouse diligent; the imperishable glowOf summer sunshine never more confessedThe harmony of nature, the divineDiffusive spirit of the Beautiful.Out in the snowy dimness, half revealedLike ghosts in glimpsing moonshine, wildly runThe children in bewildering delight.There is a living glory in the air—A glory in the hush’d air, in the soulA palpitating wonder hush’d in awe.Softly—with delicate softness—as the lightQuickens in the undawned east; and silently—With definite silence—as the stealing dawnDapples the floating clouds, slow fall, slow fall,With indecisive motion eddying down,The white-winged flakes—calm as the sleep of sound,Dim as a dream. The silver-misted airShines with mild radiance, as when thro’ a cloudOf semi-lucent vapour shines the moon.I saw last evening (when the ruddy sun,Enlarged and strange, sank low and visibly,Spreading fierce orange o’er the west), a sceneOf winter in his milder mood. Green fields,Which no kine cropped, lay damp; and naked treesThrew skeleton shadows. Hedges thickly grown,Twined into compact firmness with no leaves,Trembled in jewelled fretwork as the sunTo lustre touched the tremulous waterdrops.Alone, nor whistling as his fellows doIn fabling poem and provincial song,The ploughboy shouted to his reeking team;And at the clamour, from a neighbouring fieldArose, with whirr of wings, a flock of rooksMore clamorous; and thro’ the frosted air,Blown wildly here and there without a law,They flew, low-grumbling out loquacious croaks.Red sunset brightened all things; streams ran redYet coldly; and before the unwholesome east,Searching the bones and breathing ice, blew downThe hill with a dry whistle, by the fireIn chamber twilight rested I at home.But now what revelation of fair change,O Giver of the seasons and the days!Creator of all elements, pale mists,Invisible great winds and exact frost!How shall I speak the wonder of thy snow?What though we know its essence and its birth,Can quick expound in philosophic wise,The how, and whence, and manner of its fall;Yet, oh, the inner beauty and the life—The life that is in snow! The virgin-softAnd utter purity of the down-flakeFalling upon its fellow with no sound!Unblown by vulgar winds, innumerous flakesFall gently, with the gentleness of love!Between its spotless-clothëd banks, in clearPellucid luculence, the Luggie seemsCharmed in its course, and with deceptive calmFlows mazily in unapparent lapse,A liquid silence. Every field is robed,And in the furrow lies the plough unused.The earth is cherished, for beneath the softPure uniformity, is gently bornWarmth and rich mildness fitting the dead rootsFor the resuscitation of the spring.Now while I write, the wonder clothes the vale,Calmed every wind and loaded every grove;And looking thro’ the implicated boughsI see a gleaming radiance. Sparkling snowRefined by morning-footed frost so stillMantles each bough; and such a windless hushBreathes thro’ the air, it seems the fairy glenAbout some phantom palace, pale abodeOf fabledSleeping Beauty. Songless birdsFlit restlessly about the breathless wood,Waiting the sudden breaking of the charm;And as they quickly spring on nimble wingFrom the white twig, a sparkling shower fallsStarlike. It is not whiteness, but a clearOutshining of all purity, which takesThe winking eyes with such a silvery gleam.No sunshine, and the sky is all one cloud.The vale seems lonely, ghostlike; while aloudThe housewife’s voice is heard with doubled sound.I have not words to speak the perfect show;The ravishment of beauty; the delightOf silent purity; the sanctityOf inspiration which o’erflows the world,Making it breathless with divinity.God makes His angels spirits—that is, winds—His ministers a flaming fire. So, heart!(Weak heart that fainted in thy loneliness)In the sweet breezes spirits are alive;God’s angels guide the thunder-clouds; and GodSpeaks in the thunder truly. All aroundIs loving and continuous deity;His mercy over all His works remains.And surely in the glossy snow there shinesAngelic influence—a ministryDevout and heavenly, that with benignAction, amid a wondrous hush lets fallThe dazzling garment on the fostered fields.So thus with fair delapsion softly fallsThe sacred shower; and when the shortened dayDejected dies in the low streaky west,The rimy moon displays a cold blue night,And keen as steel the east wind sprinkles ice.Thicker than bees, about the waxing moonGather the punctual stars. Huge whitened hillsRise glimmering to the blue verge of the night,Ghostlike, and striped with narrow glens of firsBlack-waving, solemn. O’er the Luggie streamGathers a veiny film of ice, and creepsWith elfin feet around each stone and reed,Working fine masonry; while o’er the damDashing, a noise of waters fills the clearAnd nitrous air. All the dark wintry hoursSharply the winds from the white level moorsKeen whistle. Timorous in homely bedThe schoolboy listens, fearful lest gaunt wolvesOr beasts, whose uncouth forms in ancient booksHe has beheld, at creaking shutters pullHowling. And when at last the languid dawnIn windy redness re-illumes the eastWith ineffectual fire, an intense blueSeverely vivid o’er the snowy hillsGleams chill, while hazy half-transparent cloudsSlow-range the freezing ether of the west.Along the woods the keenly vehement blastsWail, and disrobe the mantled boughs, and flingA snow-dust everywhere. Thus wears the day:While grandfather over the well-watched fireHangs cowering, with a cold drop at his nose.Now underneath the ice the Luggie growls,And to the polished smoothness curlers comeRudely ambitious. Then for happy hoursThe clinking stones are slid from wary hands,AndBarleycorn, best wine for surly airs,Bites i’ th’ mouth, and ancient jokes are crack’d.And oh, the journey homeward, when the sun,Low-rounding to the west, in ruddy glowSinks large, and all the amber-skirted clouds,His flaming retinue, with dark’ning glowDiverge! The broom is brandished as the signOf conquest, and impetuously they boastOf how this shot was played—with what a bendPeculiar—the perfection of all art—That stone came rolling grandly to theTeeWith victory crown’d, and flinging wide the restIn lordly crash! Within the village inn,What time the stars are sown in ether keen,Clear and acute with brightness; and the moonSharpens her semicircle; and the airWith bleakly shivering sough cuts like a scythe,They by the roaring chimney sit, and quaffThe beaded ‘Usqueba’ with sugar dash’d.Oh, when the precious liquid fires the brainTo joy, and every heart beats fast with mirthAnd ancient fellowship, what nervy graspsOf horny hands o’er tables of rough oak!What singing ofLang Synetill teardrops shineAnd friendships brighten as the evening wanes!Now the dead earth, wrapt solemnly, expectsThe punctual resurrection of the Spring.Shackled and bound, the coldly vigilant frostStiffens all rivers, and with eager powerHardens each glebe. The wasted country ownsThe keen despotic vehemence of the North;And, with the resignation that obtainsWhere he is weak and powerless, man awaits,Under God’s mercy, the dissolvent thaw.O All-beholding, All-informing GodInvisible, andonlythrough effectsKnown and belov’d, unshackle the waste earth!Soul of the incomplete vitalityIn atom and in man! Soul of all Worlds!Leave not Thy glory vacant, nor afflictWith fear and hunger man whom Thou hast made.Thou from Thy chambers waterest the earth;Thou givest snow like wool; and scatterest wideHoarfrost like ashes. Casting forth Thy iceLike morsels, who can stand before Thy cold?Thou sendest forth Thy word, and lo! they melt;Causing Thy wind to blow, the waters flow.[A]Soon the frozen air receives the subtle thaw:And suddenly a crawling mist, with rainImpregn’d, the damp day dims, and drizzling dropsProclaim a change. At night across the heavensSwift-journeying, and by a furious windSquadron’d, the hurrying clouds range the roused sky,Magnificently sombrous. The wan moon,Amazed, gleams often through a cloudy rack,Then, shuddering, hides. One earnest wakeful starOf living sapphire drooping by her side,A faithful spirit in her lone despair,Outshines the cloudy tempest. Then the showerFalls ceaseless, and night murmurs with the rain.And in the sounding morning what a change!The meadows shine new-washed; while here and thereA dusky patch of snow in shelter’d pathsMelts lonely. The awakened forest wavesWith boughs unplumed. The white investitureOf the fair earth hath vanished, and the hillsThat in the evening sunset glowed with roseAnd ineffectual baptism of gold,Shine tawdry, crawled upon by the blind rain.Now Luggie thunders down the ringing vale,Tawnily brown, wide-leaving yellow sandUpon the meadow. The South-West, aroused,Blustering in moody kindness, clears the skyTo its blue depths by a full-wingëd wind,Blowing the diapason of red March.Blow high and cleanse the sky, O South-West wind!Roll the full clouds obedient; overthrowWhite crags of vapour in confusion piledPrecipitate, high-toppling, undissolved;And while with silent workings they are spreadAnd scattered, broken into ruinous pompBy Thy invisible influence, what calmAnd sweet disclosure of the upper deepCerulean, the atmospheric sea!Blow high and sift the earth, thou South-West wind!Now the dull air grows rarer, and no moreThe stark day thickens towards evenfall;Nor from the solid cloud-gloom drips the rain:But in a sunset mild and beautifulThe day sinks, till in clear dilucid air,As in a chamber newly decorate,The golden Phœbe reddens with the wind.No more through hoary mists and low-hung cloudsThe eternal hills—bones of the earth—upheaveTheir deity for worship: but severeAgainst the clear sky outlined, each sharp cragUplifts its scarred magnificence to Heaven.From breezy ledge the eagle springs aloft,And, beating boldly up against the windWith inconceivable velocity,Stretches to upper ether, and renewsHaughty communion with the regal sun!Blow high, O deep-mouth’d wind from the South-West!And in the caves and hollows of the rocksMoan mournfully, for desolation reigns.Through the unknown abysses and foul chasms,Sacred to horror and eternal dampsAnd darkness ever-cumbent, blindly howlTill the hoarse dragons, wailing in their woeInfernal, answer from accursed dens.Pleasant to him who long in sick-room pent,Surveying still the same unchanging hillsBelted with vapour, muffled up in cloud;The same raw landscape soaked in ceaseless rain;Pleasant to him the invigorating wind.Roused from reclusive thought by the deep soundAnd motion of the forest (as a steedWhen shrills the silver trumpet of the onset),He rushes to communion with old forms.Like a fair picture suddenly uncoveredTo an impatient artist, the fair earth,Touched with the primal glory of the Spring,Flings an indefinite glamour on his soul.With indistinct commotion he perceivesAll things, and his delight is indistinct.Earth’s forms and ever-living beauty strikeAmazement through his spirit, till he feelsAs one new-born to being undeflowered.The sudden music from the budding woods,The lark in air, startles and overjoys.O Laverock! (for thy Scottish name to meSounds sweetest) with unutterable loveI love thee, for each morning as I lieRelaxed and weary with my long disease,One from low grass arises visiblyAnd sings as if it sang for me alone.Among a thousand I could tell the tonesOf this, my little sweet hierophant!To fainting heart and the despairing soulWhat is more soothing than the natural voiceOf birds? One Candlemas, many years ago,When weak with pain and sickness, it infusedInto my soul a bliss delectable.For suddenly into the misty airA mellow, smooth and liquid music, clearAs silver, softer than an organ stopEre the bass grumbles, rose. The blunted winds,No longer edged severely with keen frost,Forgot to whisper, and a summer-calmPervaded soul and sense. No violetAs yet breathed perfume; from the darkling swardNo snowdrop boldly peeped; and even the ash,Whence flowed the sound, unfolded not her budsTo blacken while the embryo gathered green.And yet this hardy herald of the SpringChaunted rich harmony, daintily carved outHer voice, and through her sleek throat sobb’d her soulIn a delicious tremble. As she tunedHer pliant song, slow from the closing skyThe sacred snow fell calm. Yet through the shower,Hushing all nature into silence, clearTheFeltie-flier[B]trilled her slippery closeIn panting rapture, from the whitening ash.I stood all wonder; and to this late hourRemember the dear song with ravishment;Nor ever comes a merry Candlemas dayBut I am out to hear. And if perchanceSome warbler sprinkle on the vacant airIts homeless notes, the bird seems to my heartThe individual bird of comely greyThat sang her pliant strain through falling snow.Now, when the crumbling glebe is by the windUnbound, and snows adown the mountains hoarGlide liquid, from the furrow loose the plough.Enyoke the willing horses, and upturnWith deep-pressed share the saponaceous loam.From morn to even with progression slowThe ploughboy cuts his awkward parallels,And soberly imbrowns the decent fields.It was a hazy February dayTen years ago, when I, a boy of ten,Beheld a country ploughing-match. The mornLighted the east with a dim smoky flareOf leaden purple, as the rumbling wainsEach with a plough light-laden (while behindTrotted a horse sleek-comb’d and tail bedightWith many coloured ribbons) by our homeWent downwards to the rich fat meadow-groundsBounding the Luggie. Many a herd of beevesDew-lapp’d had fattened there, and headlong oftO’er the hoof-clattering turf they wildly ran,Lashing with swinging tail the thirsty flies.But now the smooth expanse of level greenWas quickly to be changed to sober brown;And twenty ploughs by twenty ploughmen heldTo cut with shining share the living turf.Oh many a wintry hour, thro’ wind and rain,In valleys gloom’d, or by the bleak hill-sideLonely, these twenty had themselves inuredAnd stubborn’d to perfection. Many a touchAnd word of honest kindness had been usedTo the dear faithful horsessnoovingonIn quiet patience, jutting noble chests.Now the big day, expected long, was come:And, with proud shoulders yoked, conscious they stoodPatient and unrefusing; while behind,All ready stripped, brown brawny arms displayed—Arms sinewed by long labour—eager swainsO’er-leaning slight, with cautious wary holdThe plough detain. At the commencing signA simultaneous noise discordant tearsThe air thick-closing to a hazy damp.Sudden the horses move, and the clear yokes,Well polished, clatter. With an artful bendThe gleaming coulter takes the grass and cutsThe greenly tedded blades with nibbling noiseAlmost unheard. The smooth share follows fast;And from its shining slope the clayey glebeIn neat and neighbouring furrows sidelong falls.Thus till the dank, raw-cold, and unpurged dayGathering its rheumy humours threatens rain;And the bleak night steals up the forlorn east.And when the careful verdict is preferr’dBy the wise judge (a gray-hair’d husbandman,Himself in his fresh youth a ploughboy keen),Some bosoms fire exultant. Others, slowTheir reeking horses harnessed, lag alongHeart-sad and weary; and the rumbling noiseOf homeward-going carts for miles awayIs heard, till night brings silence and repose.But never with sad motions of the soul,Despairing, yoked his sleek and smoking teamFor homeward journey my belovëd friend!He the great prize, the guinea all of gold,Gained thrice and grew a very famous man;Till Death, the churl accurs’d, him in his primeBore to the border-land of wonder. ThenI felt the blank in life when dies a friend.Inexplicable emptiness and wantUnsatisfied! The unrepealable lawConsumed the living while the dead decayed.No more, no more thro’ glorious nights of MayWe wander, chasing pleasure as of old.First night of May! and the soft-silvered moonBrightens her semicircle in the blue;And ’mid the tawny orange of the westShines the full star that ushers in the even!On the low meadows by the Luggie-sideGathers a semi-lucent mist, and creepsIn busy silence, shrouding golden furzeAnd leafy copsewood. Thro’ the tortuous dellLike an eternal sound the Luggie flowsIn unreposing melody. And here,Three perfect summers gone, my dear first friendWas with me; and we swore a sudden oath,To travel half-a-dozen miles and courtTwo sisters, whose sweet faces sunshine kissedTo berry brown and country comeliness—Kiss-worthier than the love of Solomon.So singing clearly with a merry heartOld songs—It was upon a Lammas nicht;And that sweet thing by gentle Tannahill,Married to music sweeter than itself;The Lowland Lassie—thro’ dew-silvered fieldsWe hastened ’mid the mist our footsteps raisedUntil we reached the moorland. From its bedAmong the purplish heather whirring roseThe plover, wildly screaming; and from glensOf moaning firs the pheasant’s piercing shriekDiscordant sounded. Then, ’mong elder treesThrowing antique fat shadows, soon we sawThe window panes, moon-whitened; and low heardBawtie, the shaggie collie, grumble outHis disapproval in a sullen growl.But slyly wearing nearer, cried my friend,“Whisht, Bawtie! Bawtie!” and the fellow cameWhining, and laid a wet nose in his palmObedient, while I tinkled on the panesA fairy summons to the souls within.The door creaked musically, and a facePeeped smiling, till I whispered, “Open, Kate!”And thro’ the moonshine came the low sweet quest—“Oh! is it you?” My answer was a kiss.Then entering the kitchen paved with stone,We kicked the sparkling faggot till it blazed;And sitting round it, many a tale of loveWas told, until the chrysolite of dawnBurned in the east, and from the mountain rolledThe sarcenet mists far-flaming with the morn.This was my first of May three years ago:Now in a churchyard by the Bothlin side—The Auld Aisle—moulders my first friend, and keepsAn early tryste with God, the All in All.We sat at school together on one seat,Came home together thro’ the lanes, and knewThe dunnock’s nest together in the hedge,With smooth blue eggs in cosy brightness warm.And as two youngling kine on cold Spring nightsLie close together on the bleak hill-sideFor mutual heat, so when a trouble cameWe crept to one another, growing stillTrue friends in interchange of heart and soul.But suddenly death changed his countenance,And grav’d him in the darkness far from me.O Friendship, prelibation of divineEnjoyment, union exquisite of soul,How many blessings do I owe to thee,How much of incommunicable woe!The daisies bloom among the tall green bladesUpon his grave, and listening you may hearThe Bothlin make sweet music as she flows;And you may see the poplars by her brinkTwinkle their silvery leaflets in the sun.O little wandering preacher, Bothlin brook!Wind musically by his lonely grave.O well-known face, for ever lost! and voice,For ever silent! I have heard thee singIn village inns what time the silver frostCurtained the panes in silent ministry,Sing old Scotch ballads full of love and woe,While the assimilative snow fell white and calmWith ceaseless lapse. And I have seen thee danceWild galliards with the buxom lasses, farIn lone farm-houses set on whistling hills,While the storm thickened into thunder-cloud.Dear mentor in all rustic merriment,Ever as hearty as the night was long!I miss thee often, as I do to-night,And my heart fills; and thy belovëd songsThe music and the words ring in my ears,Then Lowland lassie wilt thou go—untilMy eyes are full of tears, dear heart! dear heart!And I could pass the perilous edge of deathTo see thy dear, clear face, and hear againThe old wild music as of old, of old.But as the Luggie with a plaintive songTwists thro’ a glen of greenest gloom, and gropesFor open sunshine; and, the shadows past,Glides quicker-footed thro’ divided meadsWith sliding purl, so from that tale of gloomMy song with happier motions seeks the calmAnd quiet smoothness of a silver end.From orient valleys where as lucent dewAs ever jewelled Hermon, falls and shinesFulfilled by sunrise; where slant arrow-showersOf golden beams make every twinkling dropA diamond, and every blade of grassA glory;—comes the earth-born wandererSweet Luggie, singing. Over the mill-damSounding, a cataract in miniature,White-robed it dashes thro’ unceasing mist.Thro’ ivied bridge, adown its rocky bedShadowed by wavy limes whose branches bendKissing the wave to ripples, on it purlsAbrupt, capricious, past the hazel bowerWhere marriageable maid is being woo’d;And as on sward of velvet by her sideHer lover low reclines, while his dear tongueVoices warm passion—she confiding laysAll her mild beauty in his manly breastBlushing. Ah, Luggie! sure you murmur nowClearly and dearly o’er thy pumy stones!And when amid a pause of thought they hearThy babblement of music, never a shadeDarkens their souls. Thy song is happiness,A revelation of sweet sympathiesBy them interpreted; for never yetWas Nature sullen when the spirit shone.This is in twilight, when that only starWhite Hesperus from chastest azure grows;And as night trails her thousand shadows slowOver the spinning world, the streamlet singsHer mother earth asleep. O Autumn nights!When skies are deeply blue, and the full moonSoars in voluptuous whiteness, Juno-like,A passionate splendour; when in the great southOrion like a frozen skeletonHints of his ancient hugeness and mail’d strength;And Cassiopeia glimmers cold and clearUpon her throne of seven diamonds!In the thick-foliaged brake, the nightingaleOf Scotland, chirping stonechacker, prolongsWithwhit, whit, chirr-rthe day’s full melody.Far-sounding thro’ blue silence and smooth air,The drumming noise of the hoarse waterfallIs heard unheeded all by homely fires,And heard unheeded all in hazel bowerWhere love wings hours of serene joy; and stillAs roams witheeriewail the unbodied windThro’ ghostly glen of pine, the maiden clingsMore closely, till two firm entwining armsPress comfort; and there is a touch of lips.Now in this season—ere the flickering leaves,Touch’d with October’s fiery alchemy,Grow sere and crisp—is shorn the meadow-hay.Mingled with spiral orchis, dim blue-bellOf delicatest azure, crowfoot smooth,And ox-eye flaunting with faint flowers wild,Nameless to me—the fragrant rye-grass grew.Now with a measured sweep the keen-edged scytheCuts all to wither in the imbrowning sun.Two golden days o’erpast (with eves of cloudMagnificently coloured, heaped and strewnConfusedly) the country lasses comeBare-armed, bare-ancled; and ’mid honest mirthAnd homely jests with tinkling laughter winged,Gather the fading balm. With kindling eyes,And all the life of maidenhood aflameIn little tremulous pants,—they carry lightThe warm load to the stack.Oh, many a timeThe old man, building slow the rising stack,Saw and reproved not our wild merriment:Remembering, half-sad, his own fresh youthWhen beauty was a magic to the soulAnd a fair face a charm; when a lip-touchWas necromancy; and the perfect lifeA wondrous yearning after womanhood.But at the breathless nerve-dissolving noon,When hot the undiminished sun downthrowsDirect his beams, they from the field retireTo cool consoling grove, or haply seekThe drowsy pool by beechen shadow chilled,To lave the limbs relaxed. With eager leap,Headlong they plunge from the enamelled bankInto the liquid cold, and slowly moveWith measured strokes and palms outspread; while oft,When the clear water rises o’er the lipDallying, they uptilt the swelling chestIn unspent vigour.Oh, the pleasant time!Pleasant beneath embowering trees, when dayHides with her silken mists the distant sceneAnd breathes afar a nerve-dissolving steam—Pleasant in sweet consolatory shadeTo wander pensive. Then the soul serenesThe turbulent passions, and in devout trance,Unconscious of celestial power, revealsThe God reflected in fair natural forms.For as the Sun disdains the vulgar gazeIn his uplifted sphere, yet in the broadGrey Ocean shews a softer face, so GodIn nature shines. Oh, sweet the bowery pathOf fair Glenconner, where in volant youthI saw the heroes of divine Romance.No pathway winding through fresh orange groves,Leading to white Campanian city, setInviolably by the sapphire sea,Can fair Glenconner’s umbrage-shadowed wayExcel. The bird-embowering beechen boughs,Kissing each other, on the dusty wayThrow trembling shadows; and when warm west windsRoam hither in voluptuous unconcern,There is a music and a fragrancyUpon Glenconner, like the music hymnedBy quires angelic on cerulean floors.Deem not I speak in vanity, or speakIn false hyperbole, as poets doWhen languaging in love the radianceOf maids; but there is beauty and delightAnd passive feeling sweeter than all sense,To him who walks beneath the boughs, and hearsThe humming music like the sound of seas.There have I dreamed for hours—and gathered thereThe homely inspiration which fulfilsThe yearning of my soul. There have I feltThe unconfined divinity which liesIn beauty; and when the eternal starsHave twinkled silver thro’ illumined leaves,I could not choose but worship.O fair evesOf undescribable sweetness long ago!When gloaming caught me musing unawares,Musing alone beneath the whispering leavesThat overshade Glenconner. Hour of calmSuggestive thought, when, like a robe, the earthPuts on a shadowy pensiveness, and stillsThe music of her motions multiform.Day lingered in the west; and thro’ a skyOf thinly-waning orange, sullen cloudsOf amethyst, with flamy purple edged,Moved evenly in sluggish pilotage.The windless shades of quiet eventideSlow gathered, and the sweet concordant tonesOf melody within the leafy brakeDied clearly, till the Mavis piped alone;Then softly from the jasper sky, a starDrew radiant silver, brightening as the westDarkened. But ere the semicircled moonShed her white light adown the lucent air,The Mavis ceased, and thro’ the thin gloom brakeThe Corncraik’s curious cry, the sylvan voiceOf the shy bird that haunts the bladed corn;And suddenly, yet silently, the blueDeepened, until innumerous white starsThro’ crystal smooth and yielding ether drooped,Not coldly, but in passionate June glow.The Corncraik now, ’mong tall green bladed cornBreasted her eggs with feathers dew-besprent,And stayed her human cry. The silence leftA gap within the soul, a sudden grief,An emptiness in the low sighing air.Then swooning through full night, the summer’d earthBosom’d her children into tender rest;Now delicately chambered ladies breatheTheir souls asleep in white-limb’d luxury.O Virgins purest lipped! with snowy lidsSoft closed on living eyes! O unkissed cheeks,Half-sunk in pillowy pressure, and round armsIn the sweet pettishness of silver dreamsFlung warm into the cold unheeding air!Sleep! soft bedewer of infantine eyes,Pouter of rosy little lips! plump handsAre doubled into deeply-dimpled fistsAnd stretched in rosy langour, curls are laidIn fragrance on the rounded baby-face,Kiss-worthy darling! Stiller of clear tonguesAnd silvery laughter! Now the musical noiseOf little feet is silent, and blue shoesNo more come pattering from the nursery door.Death is not of thee, Sleep! Thy calm domainIs tempered with a dreamy bliss, and dimmedWith haunted glooms, and richly sanctifiedWith the fine elements of Paradise.Burn in the gleaming sky, ye far-off Stars!And thou, O inoffensive Crescent! liftThe wonder of thy softness, the white shellOf thy clear beauty, till the wholesome dawnWither thy brightness pale, and borrowed pride!But sleep supine, on indolent afternoonEre the winds wake, and holy mountain airsDescend, is sweet. Oh, let the bard describeThe sacred spot where, underneath the roundGreen odoriferous sycamore, he laySleepless, yet half-asleep, in that one moodWhen the quick sense is duped, and angel wingsMake spiritual music. Sweet and dimThe sacred spot, belovëd not aloneFor its own beauty: but the memories,The pictures of the past which in the mindArise in fair profusion, each distinctWith the soft hue of some peculiar mood,Enchant to living lustre what beforeWas to the untaught vision simply fair.In a fair valley, carpeted with turfElastic, sloping upwards from the stream,A rounded sycamore in honied leavesMost plenteous, murmurous with humming bees,Shadows a well. Darkly the crystal waveGleams cold, secluded; on its polished breastImaging twining boughs. No pitcher breaksIts natural sleep, except at morn and eveWhen my good mother thro’ the dewy grassWalks patient with her vessels, bringing homeThe clear refreshment. Every blowing Spring,A snowdrop, with pure streaks of delicate greenUpon its inmost leaves, from withered grassSprings whitely, and within its limpid breastIs mirror’d whitely. Not a finger plucksThis hidden beauty; but it blooms and dies,In lonely lustre blooms and lonely dies—Unknown, unloved, save by one simple heartPoetic, the creator of this song.And after this frail luxury hath givenIts little life in keeping to the soulOf all the worlds, a robin builds its nestIn lowly cleft, a foot or so aboveThe water. His dried leaves, and moss, and grassHe hither carries, lining all with hairFor softness. I have laid the hand that writesThese rhymes belovëd, on the crimson breast,Sleek-soft, that panted o’er the five unborn;While, leaf-hid, o’er me sang the watchful matePlaintive, and with a sorrow in the song,In silvan nook where anchoret might dwellContented. Often on September days,When woods were efflorescent, and the fieldsRefulgent with the bounty of the corn,And warming sunshine filled the breathless airWith a pale steam,—in heart-confused moodHave I worn holidays enraptured there;For, O dear God! there is a pure delightIn dreaming: in those mental-weary times,When the vext spirit finds a false contentIn fashioning delusions. Oh, to lieSupinely stretched upon the shaded turf,Beholding thro’ the openings of green leavesWhite clouds in silence navigating slowCerulean seas illimitable! HushedThe drowsy noon, and, with a stilly soundLike harmony of thought, the Luggie frets—Its bubbling mellowed to a musical humBy distance. Then the influences faint,Those visionary impulses that swellThe soul to inspiration, crowding comeMysterious: and phantom memory(Ghost of dead feeling) haunts the undissolved,The unsubvertive temple of the soul!But as thro’ loamy meadows lipping slowEats the fern-fringëd Luggie; and in sprayLeaps the mill-dam, and o’er the rocky flatsSpreads in black eddies; so my firstborn songHastes to the end in heedless vagrancy.O ravishingly sweet the clacking noiseOf looms that murmur in our quiet dell!No fairer valley Dyer ever dreamed—Dyer, best river-singer, bard amongTen thousand. Reader, hasten ye and come,And see the Luggie wind her liquid streamThro’ copsy villages and spiry towns;And see the Bothlin trotting swift of footFrom glades of alder, eager to combineHer dimpling harmony with Luggie’s calmClear music, like the music of the soul.But where you see the meeting, reader, stay,O stay and hear the music of the looms.Thro’ homely rustic bridge with ivy shagged(Which you shall see if ever you do comeA summer pilgrim to our valley fair),The Luggie flows with bells of foam-like starsAbout its surface. A smooth bleaching-greenSpreads its soft carpet to the open doorsOf simple houses, shining-white. Blue smokeCurls thro’ the breathing air to the tree-topsThin spreading, and is lost. A humming noiseIndustrious is heard, the clack of looms,Whereon sit maidens, homely fair, and fullOf household simpleness, who sing and weave,And sing and weave thro’ all the easy hours,Each day to-morrow’s counterpart, and smoothMemory the mirror wherein golden Hope,Contented, sees herself. Here dwell an oldCouple whose lives have known twice forty years(My mother’s parents), their sage spirits touchedWith blest anticipation of a homeCelestial bright, wherein they may fulfilThe life which death discovers. Last winter nightI, an accustomed visitant, beheldThe dear old pair. He in an easy chairLay dozing, while beside her noiseless wheelShe sat, her brow into her lap declined,And half asleep! Sure sign, my mother said,Of the conclusion of mortality.A boy of ten, their grandson, on the floorLay stretched in early slumber; all the threeUnconscious of my entrance. A strange sight,Fraught with strange lessons for the human soul.In the first portion of her married life,This woman, now, alas! so weary, old,Bore daughters five; of well-beloved sonsAn equal number. Some of them died young,But six are yet alive, and dwelling allWithin a mile of her own house. The flower,The idol of the mother, and her pride,Dear magnet of all hopes, embodimentOf heavenly blessings, was the youngest son,Youngest of all. Me often has she toldHow not a man could fling the stone with him;That in his shoes he outran racers fleetBarefooted; dancing on the shaven greenOn summer holidays and autumn eves(As to this day they do) his laugh was clearest,Lightest his step; and he could thrill the heartsOf simple women by a natural grace,And perilous recital of love tales.I cannot tell by what mysterious means,Day-dream, or silver vision of the night,Or sacred show of reason, picturingA smooth ambition and calm happinessFor years of weaker age—but suddenlyIn prime of life there flowered in his soulAn inextinguishable love to beA minister of God. When holy schemesGovern the motions of the spirit, waysAre found to compass them. With wary care,Frugality praiseworthy, and the strengthOf two strong arms, he in the summer monthsHoarded a competence equivalentTo all demands, until the session’s end.Whate’er by manual labour he had gainedThro’ the clear summer months in verdant fields,With brooks of silver laced, and cool’d with winds,Was spent in winter in the smoky town.But when, his annual course of study past,He with his presence blessed his father’s house,With what a sacred sanctity of hopeEager his mother dreamed, or garrulousSpake of him everywhere—his foreign ways,And midnight porings o’eruncannybooks.His father, with a stern delight suffused,Grew a proud man of some importance nowIn his own eyes; for who in all the valeHad e’er a son so noble and so learned,So worthy as his own?So time wore on: but when three years completeHad perfected their separate destinies,A change stole o’er the current of their lives,As a cloud-shadow glooms the crystal stream.Their son came home, but with his coming cameSorrow. A hue too beautifully fairBrighten’d his cheek, as sunlight tints a cloud.His face had caught a trick of joy more sadThan visible grief; and all the subtle frameOf human life, so wonderfully wrought,A mystery of mechanism, was wearingIn sore uneasy manner to the grave.What need to tell what every heart must knowIn sympathy prophetical? Long time,A varied year in seasons four complete(For the white snowdrop o’er my mother’s wellTwice oped its whitest leaves among the green),He lay consuming. It must needs have beenA weary trial to the thinking soul,Thus with a consciousness of coming death,The grim Attenuation! evermoreNearing insatiate. At her spinning-wheelHis mother sat; and when his voice grew faint,A simple whistle by his pillow lay,And at its sound she entered patient, sad,Her soothing love to minister, her hopeTo nourish to its fading. But his breathGrew weaker ever; and his dry pale lipsClosing upon the little instrument,Could not produce a faintly audible note!A little bell, the plaything of a child,Now at his bedside hung, and its clear tonesTinkled the weary summons. Thus his timeNarrowed to a completion, and his soul,Immortal in its nature, thro’ his eyesYearning, beheld the majesty of HimGreat in His mystery of godliness,Fulfiller of the dim Apocalypse!Twelve years have passed since then, and he is nowA happy memory in the hearts of thoseWho knew him; for to know him was to love.And oft I deem it better, as the fates,Or God, whose will is fate, have proven it;For had he lived and fallen (as who of usDoth perfectly? and let him that is proudTake heed lest he do fall) he would have beenA sadness to them in their aged hours.But now he is an honour and delight;A treasure of the memory; a joyUnutterable: by the lone firesideThey never tire to speak his praise, and sayHow, if he had been spared, he would have beenSo great, and good, and noble as (they say)The country knows; although I know full wellThat not a man in all the parish roundSpeaks of him ever; he is now forgot,And this his natal valley knows him not.—And this his natal valley knows him not?The well-belovëd, nothing?—the fair faceAnd pliant limbs, poor indistinctive dust?The body, blood, and network of the brainCrumbled as a clod crumbles! Is this all?A turf, a date, an epitaph, and thenOblivion, and profound nonentity!And thus his natal valley knows him not.Trees murmur to the passing wind, streams flow,Flowers shine with dewdrops in the shady glens,All unintelligent creation smilesIn loving-kindness; but, like a light dreamOf morning, man arises in fair show,Like the hued rainbow from incumbent gloomElicited, he shines against the sun—A momentary glory. Not a voiceRemains to whisper of his whereabouts:The palpable body in its mother’s breastDissolves, and every feature of the faceIs lost in feculent changes. O black earth!Wrap from bare eyes the slow decaying form,The beauty rotting from the living hair,The body made incapable thro’ sinGod’s Spirit to contain. Earth, wrap it closeTill the heavens vibrate to the trump of doom!This is not all: for the invisible soulBetrays the soft desire, the quenchless wish,To live a purer life, more proximateTo the prime Fountain of all life. The powerOf vivid fancy and the boundless scenes(High coloured with the colouring of Heaven),Creations of imagination, tellThe mortal yearnings of immortal souls!Now, while around me in blind labour windsHowl, and the rain-drops lash the streaming pane;Now, while the pine-glen on the mountain sideRoars in its wrestling with the sightless foe,And the black tarn grows hoary with the storm;—Amid the external elemental war,My soul with calm comportment—more becalmedBy the wild tempest furious without—Sits in her sacred cell, and ruminatesOn Death, severe discloser of new life.When the well-known and once embraceable formIs but a handful of white dust, the soulGrows in divine dilation, nearer God.Therefore grieve not, my heart, that unsustainedHis memory died among us, that no more,While yet the grass is hoary and the dawnLingers, he shyly thro’ untrodden fieldsBrushes his early path: that he no moreBeneath the beech, in lassitude outstretched,Ponders the holy strains of Israel’s King;For in translated glory, and new clothedWith Incorruptible, he purer airBreathes in a fairer valley. There no stormMaddens as now; no flux, and no opaque,But all is calm, and permanent, and clear,God’s glory and the Lamb illumine all!Now ends this song—not for self-honour sung,But in the Luggie’s service. It hath beenA crownëd vision and a silver dream,That I should touch this valley with renownEternal, make the fretting waters gleamIn light above the common light of earth.The shoreless air of heaven is purer here,The golden beams more keenly crystalline,The skies more deeply sapphired. For to me,About these emerald fields and lawny hills,There linger glories which you cannot see,And influences which you cannot feel,Delight and incommunicable woe!My home is here; and like a patient star,Shining between untroubled ParadiseAnd my own soul, a mother shines therein,The sole perfection of true womanhood:A father—with the wisdom which pertainsTo grey experience, and that stern delightIn naked truth, and reason which belongsTo the intense reflective mind—hath toldHis fifty winters here. And all the hopesWhich gild the present; all the sad regretsWhich dull the past, are present to my soulIn the external forms and colouringsOf this dear valley. Therefore do I yearnTo make its stream flow in undying verse,Low-singing thro’ the labyrinthine dell!And let forgiving charity precludeHarsh judgments from the singer: not that heFearfully would forestal the righteous word,Blameworthy, spoken in kindness, and that truthWhich sanctions condemnation. Yet, dear Lord,A youthful flattering of the spirit, touchedWith a desire unquenchable, displaysMy hope’s delirium. Oh! if the dreamFade into nothing, into worse than nought,Blackness of darkness like the golden zonesOf an autumnal sunset, and the nightOf unfulfilled ambition closes roundMy destiny, think what an awful hellO’erwhelms the conquer’d soul! Therefore, O menWho guard with jealousy and loving careThe honour of our sacred literature,Read with a kindness born of trustful hope,Forgiving rambling schoolboy thoughts, too plainTo utter with a spasm, or clothe in coldMosaic fretwork of well-pleasing words,Forgiving youth’s vagaries, want of skill,And blind devotional passion for my home!

And unto thee, my friend! thou prime of soul’Mong men; I gladly bring my firstborn song!Would it were worthier for thy noble sake,True poet and true English gentleman!Thy favours flattered me, thy praise inspired:Thy utter kindness took my heart, and nowThy love alleviates my slow decline.

Beneath an ash in beauty tender leaved,And thro’ whose boughs the glimmering sunshine flow’dIn rare ethereal jasper, making coolA chequered shadow in the dark-green grass,I lay enchanted. At my head there bloomedA hedge of sweet-brier, fragrant as the breathOf maid belovëd when her cheek is laidTo yours in downy pressure, soft as sleep.A bank of harebells, flowers unspeakableFor half-transparent azure, nodding, gleamedAs a faint zephyr, laden with perfume,Kissed them to motion, gently, with no will.Before me streams most dear unto my heart,Sweet Luggie, sylvan Bothlin—fairer twainThan ever sung themselves into the sea,Lucid Ægean, gemmed with sacred isles—Were rolled together in an emerald vale;And into the severe bright noon, the smokeIn airy circles o’er the sycamoresUpcurled—a lonely little cloud of blueAbove the happy hamlet. Far away,A gently-rising hill with umbrage clad,Hazel and glossy birch and silver fir,Met the keen sky. Oh, in that wood, I know,The woodruff and the hyacinth are fairIn their own season; with the bilberryOf dim and misty blue, to childhood dear.Here, on a sunny August afternoon,A vision stirred my spirit half-awakeTo fling a purer lustre on those fieldsThat knew my boyish footsteps; and to singThy pastoral beauty, Luggie, into fame.Now, while the nights are long, by the dear hearthOf home I write; and ere the mavis trillsHis smooth notes from the budding boughs of March,While the red windy morning o’er the eastWidens, or while the lowly sky of eveBurns like a topaz;—all the dear designMay reach completion, married to my songAs far as words can syllable desire.

May yet the inspiration and delightThat proved my soul on that Autumnal day,Be with me now, while o’er the naked earthHushfully falls the soft, white, windless snow!

Once more, O God, once more before I die,Before blind darkness and the wormy graveContain me, and my memory fades awayLike a sweet-coloured evening, slowly sad—Once more, O God, thy wonders take my soul.A winter day! the feather-silent snowThickens the air with strange delight, and laysA fairy carpet on the barren lea.No sun, yet all around that inward lightWhich is in purity,—a soft moonshine,The silvery dimness of a happy dream.How beautiful! afar on moorland ways,Bosomed by mountains, darkened by huge glens,(Where the lone altar raised by Druid handsStands like a mournful phantom), hidden cloudsLet fall soft beauty, till each green fir branchIs plumed and tassel’d, till each heather stalkIs delicately fringed. The sycamores,Thro’ all their mystical entanglementOf boughs, are draped with silver. All the greenOf sweet leaves playing with the subtle airIn dainty murmuring; the obstinate droneOf limber bees that in the monkshood bellsHouse diligent; the imperishable glowOf summer sunshine never more confessedThe harmony of nature, the divineDiffusive spirit of the Beautiful.Out in the snowy dimness, half revealedLike ghosts in glimpsing moonshine, wildly runThe children in bewildering delight.There is a living glory in the air—A glory in the hush’d air, in the soulA palpitating wonder hush’d in awe.

Softly—with delicate softness—as the lightQuickens in the undawned east; and silently—With definite silence—as the stealing dawnDapples the floating clouds, slow fall, slow fall,With indecisive motion eddying down,The white-winged flakes—calm as the sleep of sound,Dim as a dream. The silver-misted airShines with mild radiance, as when thro’ a cloudOf semi-lucent vapour shines the moon.I saw last evening (when the ruddy sun,Enlarged and strange, sank low and visibly,Spreading fierce orange o’er the west), a sceneOf winter in his milder mood. Green fields,Which no kine cropped, lay damp; and naked treesThrew skeleton shadows. Hedges thickly grown,Twined into compact firmness with no leaves,Trembled in jewelled fretwork as the sunTo lustre touched the tremulous waterdrops.Alone, nor whistling as his fellows doIn fabling poem and provincial song,The ploughboy shouted to his reeking team;And at the clamour, from a neighbouring fieldArose, with whirr of wings, a flock of rooksMore clamorous; and thro’ the frosted air,Blown wildly here and there without a law,They flew, low-grumbling out loquacious croaks.Red sunset brightened all things; streams ran redYet coldly; and before the unwholesome east,Searching the bones and breathing ice, blew downThe hill with a dry whistle, by the fireIn chamber twilight rested I at home.

But now what revelation of fair change,O Giver of the seasons and the days!Creator of all elements, pale mists,Invisible great winds and exact frost!How shall I speak the wonder of thy snow?What though we know its essence and its birth,Can quick expound in philosophic wise,The how, and whence, and manner of its fall;Yet, oh, the inner beauty and the life—The life that is in snow! The virgin-softAnd utter purity of the down-flakeFalling upon its fellow with no sound!Unblown by vulgar winds, innumerous flakesFall gently, with the gentleness of love!Between its spotless-clothëd banks, in clearPellucid luculence, the Luggie seemsCharmed in its course, and with deceptive calmFlows mazily in unapparent lapse,A liquid silence. Every field is robed,And in the furrow lies the plough unused.The earth is cherished, for beneath the softPure uniformity, is gently bornWarmth and rich mildness fitting the dead rootsFor the resuscitation of the spring.

Now while I write, the wonder clothes the vale,Calmed every wind and loaded every grove;And looking thro’ the implicated boughsI see a gleaming radiance. Sparkling snowRefined by morning-footed frost so stillMantles each bough; and such a windless hushBreathes thro’ the air, it seems the fairy glenAbout some phantom palace, pale abodeOf fabledSleeping Beauty. Songless birdsFlit restlessly about the breathless wood,Waiting the sudden breaking of the charm;And as they quickly spring on nimble wingFrom the white twig, a sparkling shower fallsStarlike. It is not whiteness, but a clearOutshining of all purity, which takesThe winking eyes with such a silvery gleam.No sunshine, and the sky is all one cloud.The vale seems lonely, ghostlike; while aloudThe housewife’s voice is heard with doubled sound.I have not words to speak the perfect show;The ravishment of beauty; the delightOf silent purity; the sanctityOf inspiration which o’erflows the world,Making it breathless with divinity.God makes His angels spirits—that is, winds—His ministers a flaming fire. So, heart!(Weak heart that fainted in thy loneliness)In the sweet breezes spirits are alive;God’s angels guide the thunder-clouds; and GodSpeaks in the thunder truly. All aroundIs loving and continuous deity;His mercy over all His works remains.And surely in the glossy snow there shinesAngelic influence—a ministryDevout and heavenly, that with benignAction, amid a wondrous hush lets fallThe dazzling garment on the fostered fields.

So thus with fair delapsion softly fallsThe sacred shower; and when the shortened dayDejected dies in the low streaky west,The rimy moon displays a cold blue night,And keen as steel the east wind sprinkles ice.Thicker than bees, about the waxing moonGather the punctual stars. Huge whitened hillsRise glimmering to the blue verge of the night,Ghostlike, and striped with narrow glens of firsBlack-waving, solemn. O’er the Luggie streamGathers a veiny film of ice, and creepsWith elfin feet around each stone and reed,Working fine masonry; while o’er the damDashing, a noise of waters fills the clearAnd nitrous air. All the dark wintry hoursSharply the winds from the white level moorsKeen whistle. Timorous in homely bedThe schoolboy listens, fearful lest gaunt wolvesOr beasts, whose uncouth forms in ancient booksHe has beheld, at creaking shutters pullHowling. And when at last the languid dawnIn windy redness re-illumes the eastWith ineffectual fire, an intense blueSeverely vivid o’er the snowy hillsGleams chill, while hazy half-transparent cloudsSlow-range the freezing ether of the west.Along the woods the keenly vehement blastsWail, and disrobe the mantled boughs, and flingA snow-dust everywhere. Thus wears the day:While grandfather over the well-watched fireHangs cowering, with a cold drop at his nose.

Now underneath the ice the Luggie growls,And to the polished smoothness curlers comeRudely ambitious. Then for happy hoursThe clinking stones are slid from wary hands,AndBarleycorn, best wine for surly airs,Bites i’ th’ mouth, and ancient jokes are crack’d.And oh, the journey homeward, when the sun,Low-rounding to the west, in ruddy glowSinks large, and all the amber-skirted clouds,His flaming retinue, with dark’ning glowDiverge! The broom is brandished as the signOf conquest, and impetuously they boastOf how this shot was played—with what a bendPeculiar—the perfection of all art—That stone came rolling grandly to theTeeWith victory crown’d, and flinging wide the restIn lordly crash! Within the village inn,What time the stars are sown in ether keen,Clear and acute with brightness; and the moonSharpens her semicircle; and the airWith bleakly shivering sough cuts like a scythe,They by the roaring chimney sit, and quaffThe beaded ‘Usqueba’ with sugar dash’d.Oh, when the precious liquid fires the brainTo joy, and every heart beats fast with mirthAnd ancient fellowship, what nervy graspsOf horny hands o’er tables of rough oak!What singing ofLang Synetill teardrops shineAnd friendships brighten as the evening wanes!

Now the dead earth, wrapt solemnly, expectsThe punctual resurrection of the Spring.Shackled and bound, the coldly vigilant frostStiffens all rivers, and with eager powerHardens each glebe. The wasted country ownsThe keen despotic vehemence of the North;And, with the resignation that obtainsWhere he is weak and powerless, man awaits,Under God’s mercy, the dissolvent thaw.

O All-beholding, All-informing GodInvisible, andonlythrough effectsKnown and belov’d, unshackle the waste earth!Soul of the incomplete vitalityIn atom and in man! Soul of all Worlds!Leave not Thy glory vacant, nor afflictWith fear and hunger man whom Thou hast made.Thou from Thy chambers waterest the earth;Thou givest snow like wool; and scatterest wideHoarfrost like ashes. Casting forth Thy iceLike morsels, who can stand before Thy cold?Thou sendest forth Thy word, and lo! they melt;Causing Thy wind to blow, the waters flow.[A]

Soon the frozen air receives the subtle thaw:And suddenly a crawling mist, with rainImpregn’d, the damp day dims, and drizzling dropsProclaim a change. At night across the heavensSwift-journeying, and by a furious windSquadron’d, the hurrying clouds range the roused sky,Magnificently sombrous. The wan moon,Amazed, gleams often through a cloudy rack,Then, shuddering, hides. One earnest wakeful starOf living sapphire drooping by her side,A faithful spirit in her lone despair,Outshines the cloudy tempest. Then the showerFalls ceaseless, and night murmurs with the rain.And in the sounding morning what a change!The meadows shine new-washed; while here and thereA dusky patch of snow in shelter’d pathsMelts lonely. The awakened forest wavesWith boughs unplumed. The white investitureOf the fair earth hath vanished, and the hillsThat in the evening sunset glowed with roseAnd ineffectual baptism of gold,Shine tawdry, crawled upon by the blind rain.Now Luggie thunders down the ringing vale,Tawnily brown, wide-leaving yellow sandUpon the meadow. The South-West, aroused,Blustering in moody kindness, clears the skyTo its blue depths by a full-wingëd wind,Blowing the diapason of red March.

Blow high and cleanse the sky, O South-West wind!Roll the full clouds obedient; overthrowWhite crags of vapour in confusion piledPrecipitate, high-toppling, undissolved;And while with silent workings they are spreadAnd scattered, broken into ruinous pompBy Thy invisible influence, what calmAnd sweet disclosure of the upper deepCerulean, the atmospheric sea!Blow high and sift the earth, thou South-West wind!Now the dull air grows rarer, and no moreThe stark day thickens towards evenfall;Nor from the solid cloud-gloom drips the rain:But in a sunset mild and beautifulThe day sinks, till in clear dilucid air,As in a chamber newly decorate,The golden Phœbe reddens with the wind.No more through hoary mists and low-hung cloudsThe eternal hills—bones of the earth—upheaveTheir deity for worship: but severeAgainst the clear sky outlined, each sharp cragUplifts its scarred magnificence to Heaven.From breezy ledge the eagle springs aloft,And, beating boldly up against the windWith inconceivable velocity,Stretches to upper ether, and renewsHaughty communion with the regal sun!Blow high, O deep-mouth’d wind from the South-West!And in the caves and hollows of the rocksMoan mournfully, for desolation reigns.Through the unknown abysses and foul chasms,Sacred to horror and eternal dampsAnd darkness ever-cumbent, blindly howlTill the hoarse dragons, wailing in their woeInfernal, answer from accursed dens.

Pleasant to him who long in sick-room pent,Surveying still the same unchanging hillsBelted with vapour, muffled up in cloud;The same raw landscape soaked in ceaseless rain;Pleasant to him the invigorating wind.Roused from reclusive thought by the deep soundAnd motion of the forest (as a steedWhen shrills the silver trumpet of the onset),He rushes to communion with old forms.Like a fair picture suddenly uncoveredTo an impatient artist, the fair earth,Touched with the primal glory of the Spring,Flings an indefinite glamour on his soul.With indistinct commotion he perceivesAll things, and his delight is indistinct.Earth’s forms and ever-living beauty strikeAmazement through his spirit, till he feelsAs one new-born to being undeflowered.The sudden music from the budding woods,The lark in air, startles and overjoys.O Laverock! (for thy Scottish name to meSounds sweetest) with unutterable loveI love thee, for each morning as I lieRelaxed and weary with my long disease,One from low grass arises visiblyAnd sings as if it sang for me alone.Among a thousand I could tell the tonesOf this, my little sweet hierophant!To fainting heart and the despairing soulWhat is more soothing than the natural voiceOf birds? One Candlemas, many years ago,When weak with pain and sickness, it infusedInto my soul a bliss delectable.For suddenly into the misty airA mellow, smooth and liquid music, clearAs silver, softer than an organ stopEre the bass grumbles, rose. The blunted winds,No longer edged severely with keen frost,Forgot to whisper, and a summer-calmPervaded soul and sense. No violetAs yet breathed perfume; from the darkling swardNo snowdrop boldly peeped; and even the ash,Whence flowed the sound, unfolded not her budsTo blacken while the embryo gathered green.And yet this hardy herald of the SpringChaunted rich harmony, daintily carved outHer voice, and through her sleek throat sobb’d her soulIn a delicious tremble. As she tunedHer pliant song, slow from the closing skyThe sacred snow fell calm. Yet through the shower,Hushing all nature into silence, clearTheFeltie-flier[B]trilled her slippery closeIn panting rapture, from the whitening ash.I stood all wonder; and to this late hourRemember the dear song with ravishment;Nor ever comes a merry Candlemas dayBut I am out to hear. And if perchanceSome warbler sprinkle on the vacant airIts homeless notes, the bird seems to my heartThe individual bird of comely greyThat sang her pliant strain through falling snow.

Now, when the crumbling glebe is by the windUnbound, and snows adown the mountains hoarGlide liquid, from the furrow loose the plough.Enyoke the willing horses, and upturnWith deep-pressed share the saponaceous loam.From morn to even with progression slowThe ploughboy cuts his awkward parallels,And soberly imbrowns the decent fields.It was a hazy February dayTen years ago, when I, a boy of ten,Beheld a country ploughing-match. The mornLighted the east with a dim smoky flareOf leaden purple, as the rumbling wainsEach with a plough light-laden (while behindTrotted a horse sleek-comb’d and tail bedightWith many coloured ribbons) by our homeWent downwards to the rich fat meadow-groundsBounding the Luggie. Many a herd of beevesDew-lapp’d had fattened there, and headlong oftO’er the hoof-clattering turf they wildly ran,Lashing with swinging tail the thirsty flies.But now the smooth expanse of level greenWas quickly to be changed to sober brown;And twenty ploughs by twenty ploughmen heldTo cut with shining share the living turf.Oh many a wintry hour, thro’ wind and rain,In valleys gloom’d, or by the bleak hill-sideLonely, these twenty had themselves inuredAnd stubborn’d to perfection. Many a touchAnd word of honest kindness had been usedTo the dear faithful horsessnoovingonIn quiet patience, jutting noble chests.Now the big day, expected long, was come:And, with proud shoulders yoked, conscious they stoodPatient and unrefusing; while behind,All ready stripped, brown brawny arms displayed—Arms sinewed by long labour—eager swainsO’er-leaning slight, with cautious wary holdThe plough detain. At the commencing signA simultaneous noise discordant tearsThe air thick-closing to a hazy damp.Sudden the horses move, and the clear yokes,Well polished, clatter. With an artful bendThe gleaming coulter takes the grass and cutsThe greenly tedded blades with nibbling noiseAlmost unheard. The smooth share follows fast;And from its shining slope the clayey glebeIn neat and neighbouring furrows sidelong falls.Thus till the dank, raw-cold, and unpurged dayGathering its rheumy humours threatens rain;And the bleak night steals up the forlorn east.And when the careful verdict is preferr’dBy the wise judge (a gray-hair’d husbandman,Himself in his fresh youth a ploughboy keen),Some bosoms fire exultant. Others, slowTheir reeking horses harnessed, lag alongHeart-sad and weary; and the rumbling noiseOf homeward-going carts for miles awayIs heard, till night brings silence and repose.

But never with sad motions of the soul,Despairing, yoked his sleek and smoking teamFor homeward journey my belovëd friend!He the great prize, the guinea all of gold,Gained thrice and grew a very famous man;Till Death, the churl accurs’d, him in his primeBore to the border-land of wonder. ThenI felt the blank in life when dies a friend.Inexplicable emptiness and wantUnsatisfied! The unrepealable lawConsumed the living while the dead decayed.No more, no more thro’ glorious nights of MayWe wander, chasing pleasure as of old.First night of May! and the soft-silvered moonBrightens her semicircle in the blue;And ’mid the tawny orange of the westShines the full star that ushers in the even!On the low meadows by the Luggie-sideGathers a semi-lucent mist, and creepsIn busy silence, shrouding golden furzeAnd leafy copsewood. Thro’ the tortuous dellLike an eternal sound the Luggie flowsIn unreposing melody. And here,Three perfect summers gone, my dear first friendWas with me; and we swore a sudden oath,To travel half-a-dozen miles and courtTwo sisters, whose sweet faces sunshine kissedTo berry brown and country comeliness—Kiss-worthier than the love of Solomon.So singing clearly with a merry heartOld songs—It was upon a Lammas nicht;And that sweet thing by gentle Tannahill,Married to music sweeter than itself;The Lowland Lassie—thro’ dew-silvered fieldsWe hastened ’mid the mist our footsteps raisedUntil we reached the moorland. From its bedAmong the purplish heather whirring roseThe plover, wildly screaming; and from glensOf moaning firs the pheasant’s piercing shriekDiscordant sounded. Then, ’mong elder treesThrowing antique fat shadows, soon we sawThe window panes, moon-whitened; and low heardBawtie, the shaggie collie, grumble outHis disapproval in a sullen growl.But slyly wearing nearer, cried my friend,“Whisht, Bawtie! Bawtie!” and the fellow cameWhining, and laid a wet nose in his palmObedient, while I tinkled on the panesA fairy summons to the souls within.The door creaked musically, and a facePeeped smiling, till I whispered, “Open, Kate!”And thro’ the moonshine came the low sweet quest—“Oh! is it you?” My answer was a kiss.Then entering the kitchen paved with stone,We kicked the sparkling faggot till it blazed;And sitting round it, many a tale of loveWas told, until the chrysolite of dawnBurned in the east, and from the mountain rolledThe sarcenet mists far-flaming with the morn.This was my first of May three years ago:Now in a churchyard by the Bothlin side—The Auld Aisle—moulders my first friend, and keepsAn early tryste with God, the All in All.

We sat at school together on one seat,Came home together thro’ the lanes, and knewThe dunnock’s nest together in the hedge,With smooth blue eggs in cosy brightness warm.And as two youngling kine on cold Spring nightsLie close together on the bleak hill-sideFor mutual heat, so when a trouble cameWe crept to one another, growing stillTrue friends in interchange of heart and soul.But suddenly death changed his countenance,And grav’d him in the darkness far from me.O Friendship, prelibation of divineEnjoyment, union exquisite of soul,How many blessings do I owe to thee,How much of incommunicable woe!The daisies bloom among the tall green bladesUpon his grave, and listening you may hearThe Bothlin make sweet music as she flows;And you may see the poplars by her brinkTwinkle their silvery leaflets in the sun.O little wandering preacher, Bothlin brook!Wind musically by his lonely grave.O well-known face, for ever lost! and voice,For ever silent! I have heard thee singIn village inns what time the silver frostCurtained the panes in silent ministry,Sing old Scotch ballads full of love and woe,While the assimilative snow fell white and calmWith ceaseless lapse. And I have seen thee danceWild galliards with the buxom lasses, farIn lone farm-houses set on whistling hills,While the storm thickened into thunder-cloud.Dear mentor in all rustic merriment,Ever as hearty as the night was long!I miss thee often, as I do to-night,And my heart fills; and thy belovëd songsThe music and the words ring in my ears,Then Lowland lassie wilt thou go—untilMy eyes are full of tears, dear heart! dear heart!And I could pass the perilous edge of deathTo see thy dear, clear face, and hear againThe old wild music as of old, of old.

But as the Luggie with a plaintive songTwists thro’ a glen of greenest gloom, and gropesFor open sunshine; and, the shadows past,Glides quicker-footed thro’ divided meadsWith sliding purl, so from that tale of gloomMy song with happier motions seeks the calmAnd quiet smoothness of a silver end.From orient valleys where as lucent dewAs ever jewelled Hermon, falls and shinesFulfilled by sunrise; where slant arrow-showersOf golden beams make every twinkling dropA diamond, and every blade of grassA glory;—comes the earth-born wandererSweet Luggie, singing. Over the mill-damSounding, a cataract in miniature,White-robed it dashes thro’ unceasing mist.Thro’ ivied bridge, adown its rocky bedShadowed by wavy limes whose branches bendKissing the wave to ripples, on it purlsAbrupt, capricious, past the hazel bowerWhere marriageable maid is being woo’d;And as on sward of velvet by her sideHer lover low reclines, while his dear tongueVoices warm passion—she confiding laysAll her mild beauty in his manly breastBlushing. Ah, Luggie! sure you murmur nowClearly and dearly o’er thy pumy stones!And when amid a pause of thought they hearThy babblement of music, never a shadeDarkens their souls. Thy song is happiness,A revelation of sweet sympathiesBy them interpreted; for never yetWas Nature sullen when the spirit shone.This is in twilight, when that only starWhite Hesperus from chastest azure grows;And as night trails her thousand shadows slowOver the spinning world, the streamlet singsHer mother earth asleep. O Autumn nights!When skies are deeply blue, and the full moonSoars in voluptuous whiteness, Juno-like,A passionate splendour; when in the great southOrion like a frozen skeletonHints of his ancient hugeness and mail’d strength;And Cassiopeia glimmers cold and clearUpon her throne of seven diamonds!In the thick-foliaged brake, the nightingaleOf Scotland, chirping stonechacker, prolongsWithwhit, whit, chirr-rthe day’s full melody.Far-sounding thro’ blue silence and smooth air,The drumming noise of the hoarse waterfallIs heard unheeded all by homely fires,And heard unheeded all in hazel bowerWhere love wings hours of serene joy; and stillAs roams witheeriewail the unbodied windThro’ ghostly glen of pine, the maiden clingsMore closely, till two firm entwining armsPress comfort; and there is a touch of lips.

Now in this season—ere the flickering leaves,Touch’d with October’s fiery alchemy,Grow sere and crisp—is shorn the meadow-hay.Mingled with spiral orchis, dim blue-bellOf delicatest azure, crowfoot smooth,And ox-eye flaunting with faint flowers wild,Nameless to me—the fragrant rye-grass grew.Now with a measured sweep the keen-edged scytheCuts all to wither in the imbrowning sun.Two golden days o’erpast (with eves of cloudMagnificently coloured, heaped and strewnConfusedly) the country lasses comeBare-armed, bare-ancled; and ’mid honest mirthAnd homely jests with tinkling laughter winged,Gather the fading balm. With kindling eyes,And all the life of maidenhood aflameIn little tremulous pants,—they carry lightThe warm load to the stack.Oh, many a timeThe old man, building slow the rising stack,Saw and reproved not our wild merriment:Remembering, half-sad, his own fresh youthWhen beauty was a magic to the soulAnd a fair face a charm; when a lip-touchWas necromancy; and the perfect lifeA wondrous yearning after womanhood.But at the breathless nerve-dissolving noon,When hot the undiminished sun downthrowsDirect his beams, they from the field retireTo cool consoling grove, or haply seekThe drowsy pool by beechen shadow chilled,To lave the limbs relaxed. With eager leap,Headlong they plunge from the enamelled bankInto the liquid cold, and slowly moveWith measured strokes and palms outspread; while oft,When the clear water rises o’er the lipDallying, they uptilt the swelling chestIn unspent vigour.Oh, the pleasant time!Pleasant beneath embowering trees, when dayHides with her silken mists the distant sceneAnd breathes afar a nerve-dissolving steam—Pleasant in sweet consolatory shadeTo wander pensive. Then the soul serenesThe turbulent passions, and in devout trance,Unconscious of celestial power, revealsThe God reflected in fair natural forms.For as the Sun disdains the vulgar gazeIn his uplifted sphere, yet in the broadGrey Ocean shews a softer face, so GodIn nature shines. Oh, sweet the bowery pathOf fair Glenconner, where in volant youthI saw the heroes of divine Romance.No pathway winding through fresh orange groves,Leading to white Campanian city, setInviolably by the sapphire sea,Can fair Glenconner’s umbrage-shadowed wayExcel. The bird-embowering beechen boughs,Kissing each other, on the dusty wayThrow trembling shadows; and when warm west windsRoam hither in voluptuous unconcern,There is a music and a fragrancyUpon Glenconner, like the music hymnedBy quires angelic on cerulean floors.Deem not I speak in vanity, or speakIn false hyperbole, as poets doWhen languaging in love the radianceOf maids; but there is beauty and delightAnd passive feeling sweeter than all sense,To him who walks beneath the boughs, and hearsThe humming music like the sound of seas.There have I dreamed for hours—and gathered thereThe homely inspiration which fulfilsThe yearning of my soul. There have I feltThe unconfined divinity which liesIn beauty; and when the eternal starsHave twinkled silver thro’ illumined leaves,I could not choose but worship.

O fair evesOf undescribable sweetness long ago!When gloaming caught me musing unawares,Musing alone beneath the whispering leavesThat overshade Glenconner. Hour of calmSuggestive thought, when, like a robe, the earthPuts on a shadowy pensiveness, and stillsThe music of her motions multiform.Day lingered in the west; and thro’ a skyOf thinly-waning orange, sullen cloudsOf amethyst, with flamy purple edged,Moved evenly in sluggish pilotage.The windless shades of quiet eventideSlow gathered, and the sweet concordant tonesOf melody within the leafy brakeDied clearly, till the Mavis piped alone;Then softly from the jasper sky, a starDrew radiant silver, brightening as the westDarkened. But ere the semicircled moonShed her white light adown the lucent air,The Mavis ceased, and thro’ the thin gloom brakeThe Corncraik’s curious cry, the sylvan voiceOf the shy bird that haunts the bladed corn;And suddenly, yet silently, the blueDeepened, until innumerous white starsThro’ crystal smooth and yielding ether drooped,Not coldly, but in passionate June glow.The Corncraik now, ’mong tall green bladed cornBreasted her eggs with feathers dew-besprent,And stayed her human cry. The silence leftA gap within the soul, a sudden grief,An emptiness in the low sighing air.Then swooning through full night, the summer’d earthBosom’d her children into tender rest;Now delicately chambered ladies breatheTheir souls asleep in white-limb’d luxury.O Virgins purest lipped! with snowy lidsSoft closed on living eyes! O unkissed cheeks,Half-sunk in pillowy pressure, and round armsIn the sweet pettishness of silver dreamsFlung warm into the cold unheeding air!Sleep! soft bedewer of infantine eyes,Pouter of rosy little lips! plump handsAre doubled into deeply-dimpled fistsAnd stretched in rosy langour, curls are laidIn fragrance on the rounded baby-face,Kiss-worthy darling! Stiller of clear tonguesAnd silvery laughter! Now the musical noiseOf little feet is silent, and blue shoesNo more come pattering from the nursery door.Death is not of thee, Sleep! Thy calm domainIs tempered with a dreamy bliss, and dimmedWith haunted glooms, and richly sanctifiedWith the fine elements of Paradise.Burn in the gleaming sky, ye far-off Stars!And thou, O inoffensive Crescent! liftThe wonder of thy softness, the white shellOf thy clear beauty, till the wholesome dawnWither thy brightness pale, and borrowed pride!

But sleep supine, on indolent afternoonEre the winds wake, and holy mountain airsDescend, is sweet. Oh, let the bard describeThe sacred spot where, underneath the roundGreen odoriferous sycamore, he laySleepless, yet half-asleep, in that one moodWhen the quick sense is duped, and angel wingsMake spiritual music. Sweet and dimThe sacred spot, belovëd not aloneFor its own beauty: but the memories,The pictures of the past which in the mindArise in fair profusion, each distinctWith the soft hue of some peculiar mood,Enchant to living lustre what beforeWas to the untaught vision simply fair.In a fair valley, carpeted with turfElastic, sloping upwards from the stream,A rounded sycamore in honied leavesMost plenteous, murmurous with humming bees,Shadows a well. Darkly the crystal waveGleams cold, secluded; on its polished breastImaging twining boughs. No pitcher breaksIts natural sleep, except at morn and eveWhen my good mother thro’ the dewy grassWalks patient with her vessels, bringing homeThe clear refreshment. Every blowing Spring,A snowdrop, with pure streaks of delicate greenUpon its inmost leaves, from withered grassSprings whitely, and within its limpid breastIs mirror’d whitely. Not a finger plucksThis hidden beauty; but it blooms and dies,In lonely lustre blooms and lonely dies—Unknown, unloved, save by one simple heartPoetic, the creator of this song.And after this frail luxury hath givenIts little life in keeping to the soulOf all the worlds, a robin builds its nestIn lowly cleft, a foot or so aboveThe water. His dried leaves, and moss, and grassHe hither carries, lining all with hairFor softness. I have laid the hand that writesThese rhymes belovëd, on the crimson breast,Sleek-soft, that panted o’er the five unborn;While, leaf-hid, o’er me sang the watchful matePlaintive, and with a sorrow in the song,In silvan nook where anchoret might dwellContented. Often on September days,When woods were efflorescent, and the fieldsRefulgent with the bounty of the corn,And warming sunshine filled the breathless airWith a pale steam,—in heart-confused moodHave I worn holidays enraptured there;For, O dear God! there is a pure delightIn dreaming: in those mental-weary times,When the vext spirit finds a false contentIn fashioning delusions. Oh, to lieSupinely stretched upon the shaded turf,Beholding thro’ the openings of green leavesWhite clouds in silence navigating slowCerulean seas illimitable! HushedThe drowsy noon, and, with a stilly soundLike harmony of thought, the Luggie frets—Its bubbling mellowed to a musical humBy distance. Then the influences faint,Those visionary impulses that swellThe soul to inspiration, crowding comeMysterious: and phantom memory(Ghost of dead feeling) haunts the undissolved,The unsubvertive temple of the soul!

But as thro’ loamy meadows lipping slowEats the fern-fringëd Luggie; and in sprayLeaps the mill-dam, and o’er the rocky flatsSpreads in black eddies; so my firstborn songHastes to the end in heedless vagrancy.O ravishingly sweet the clacking noiseOf looms that murmur in our quiet dell!No fairer valley Dyer ever dreamed—Dyer, best river-singer, bard amongTen thousand. Reader, hasten ye and come,And see the Luggie wind her liquid streamThro’ copsy villages and spiry towns;And see the Bothlin trotting swift of footFrom glades of alder, eager to combineHer dimpling harmony with Luggie’s calmClear music, like the music of the soul.But where you see the meeting, reader, stay,O stay and hear the music of the looms.Thro’ homely rustic bridge with ivy shagged(Which you shall see if ever you do comeA summer pilgrim to our valley fair),The Luggie flows with bells of foam-like starsAbout its surface. A smooth bleaching-greenSpreads its soft carpet to the open doorsOf simple houses, shining-white. Blue smokeCurls thro’ the breathing air to the tree-topsThin spreading, and is lost. A humming noiseIndustrious is heard, the clack of looms,Whereon sit maidens, homely fair, and fullOf household simpleness, who sing and weave,And sing and weave thro’ all the easy hours,Each day to-morrow’s counterpart, and smoothMemory the mirror wherein golden Hope,Contented, sees herself. Here dwell an oldCouple whose lives have known twice forty years(My mother’s parents), their sage spirits touchedWith blest anticipation of a homeCelestial bright, wherein they may fulfilThe life which death discovers. Last winter nightI, an accustomed visitant, beheldThe dear old pair. He in an easy chairLay dozing, while beside her noiseless wheelShe sat, her brow into her lap declined,And half asleep! Sure sign, my mother said,Of the conclusion of mortality.A boy of ten, their grandson, on the floorLay stretched in early slumber; all the threeUnconscious of my entrance. A strange sight,Fraught with strange lessons for the human soul.In the first portion of her married life,This woman, now, alas! so weary, old,Bore daughters five; of well-beloved sonsAn equal number. Some of them died young,But six are yet alive, and dwelling allWithin a mile of her own house. The flower,The idol of the mother, and her pride,Dear magnet of all hopes, embodimentOf heavenly blessings, was the youngest son,Youngest of all. Me often has she toldHow not a man could fling the stone with him;That in his shoes he outran racers fleetBarefooted; dancing on the shaven greenOn summer holidays and autumn eves(As to this day they do) his laugh was clearest,Lightest his step; and he could thrill the heartsOf simple women by a natural grace,And perilous recital of love tales.I cannot tell by what mysterious means,Day-dream, or silver vision of the night,Or sacred show of reason, picturingA smooth ambition and calm happinessFor years of weaker age—but suddenlyIn prime of life there flowered in his soulAn inextinguishable love to beA minister of God. When holy schemesGovern the motions of the spirit, waysAre found to compass them. With wary care,Frugality praiseworthy, and the strengthOf two strong arms, he in the summer monthsHoarded a competence equivalentTo all demands, until the session’s end.Whate’er by manual labour he had gainedThro’ the clear summer months in verdant fields,With brooks of silver laced, and cool’d with winds,Was spent in winter in the smoky town.But when, his annual course of study past,He with his presence blessed his father’s house,With what a sacred sanctity of hopeEager his mother dreamed, or garrulousSpake of him everywhere—his foreign ways,And midnight porings o’eruncannybooks.His father, with a stern delight suffused,Grew a proud man of some importance nowIn his own eyes; for who in all the valeHad e’er a son so noble and so learned,So worthy as his own?So time wore on: but when three years completeHad perfected their separate destinies,A change stole o’er the current of their lives,As a cloud-shadow glooms the crystal stream.Their son came home, but with his coming cameSorrow. A hue too beautifully fairBrighten’d his cheek, as sunlight tints a cloud.His face had caught a trick of joy more sadThan visible grief; and all the subtle frameOf human life, so wonderfully wrought,A mystery of mechanism, was wearingIn sore uneasy manner to the grave.What need to tell what every heart must knowIn sympathy prophetical? Long time,A varied year in seasons four complete(For the white snowdrop o’er my mother’s wellTwice oped its whitest leaves among the green),He lay consuming. It must needs have beenA weary trial to the thinking soul,Thus with a consciousness of coming death,The grim Attenuation! evermoreNearing insatiate. At her spinning-wheelHis mother sat; and when his voice grew faint,A simple whistle by his pillow lay,And at its sound she entered patient, sad,Her soothing love to minister, her hopeTo nourish to its fading. But his breathGrew weaker ever; and his dry pale lipsClosing upon the little instrument,Could not produce a faintly audible note!A little bell, the plaything of a child,Now at his bedside hung, and its clear tonesTinkled the weary summons. Thus his timeNarrowed to a completion, and his soul,Immortal in its nature, thro’ his eyesYearning, beheld the majesty of HimGreat in His mystery of godliness,Fulfiller of the dim Apocalypse!Twelve years have passed since then, and he is nowA happy memory in the hearts of thoseWho knew him; for to know him was to love.And oft I deem it better, as the fates,Or God, whose will is fate, have proven it;For had he lived and fallen (as who of usDoth perfectly? and let him that is proudTake heed lest he do fall) he would have beenA sadness to them in their aged hours.But now he is an honour and delight;A treasure of the memory; a joyUnutterable: by the lone firesideThey never tire to speak his praise, and sayHow, if he had been spared, he would have beenSo great, and good, and noble as (they say)The country knows; although I know full wellThat not a man in all the parish roundSpeaks of him ever; he is now forgot,And this his natal valley knows him not.—And this his natal valley knows him not?The well-belovëd, nothing?—the fair faceAnd pliant limbs, poor indistinctive dust?The body, blood, and network of the brainCrumbled as a clod crumbles! Is this all?A turf, a date, an epitaph, and thenOblivion, and profound nonentity!And thus his natal valley knows him not.Trees murmur to the passing wind, streams flow,Flowers shine with dewdrops in the shady glens,All unintelligent creation smilesIn loving-kindness; but, like a light dreamOf morning, man arises in fair show,Like the hued rainbow from incumbent gloomElicited, he shines against the sun—A momentary glory. Not a voiceRemains to whisper of his whereabouts:The palpable body in its mother’s breastDissolves, and every feature of the faceIs lost in feculent changes. O black earth!Wrap from bare eyes the slow decaying form,The beauty rotting from the living hair,The body made incapable thro’ sinGod’s Spirit to contain. Earth, wrap it closeTill the heavens vibrate to the trump of doom!

This is not all: for the invisible soulBetrays the soft desire, the quenchless wish,To live a purer life, more proximateTo the prime Fountain of all life. The powerOf vivid fancy and the boundless scenes(High coloured with the colouring of Heaven),Creations of imagination, tellThe mortal yearnings of immortal souls!Now, while around me in blind labour windsHowl, and the rain-drops lash the streaming pane;Now, while the pine-glen on the mountain sideRoars in its wrestling with the sightless foe,And the black tarn grows hoary with the storm;—Amid the external elemental war,My soul with calm comportment—more becalmedBy the wild tempest furious without—Sits in her sacred cell, and ruminatesOn Death, severe discloser of new life.When the well-known and once embraceable formIs but a handful of white dust, the soulGrows in divine dilation, nearer God.Therefore grieve not, my heart, that unsustainedHis memory died among us, that no more,While yet the grass is hoary and the dawnLingers, he shyly thro’ untrodden fieldsBrushes his early path: that he no moreBeneath the beech, in lassitude outstretched,Ponders the holy strains of Israel’s King;For in translated glory, and new clothedWith Incorruptible, he purer airBreathes in a fairer valley. There no stormMaddens as now; no flux, and no opaque,But all is calm, and permanent, and clear,God’s glory and the Lamb illumine all!

Now ends this song—not for self-honour sung,But in the Luggie’s service. It hath beenA crownëd vision and a silver dream,That I should touch this valley with renownEternal, make the fretting waters gleamIn light above the common light of earth.The shoreless air of heaven is purer here,The golden beams more keenly crystalline,The skies more deeply sapphired. For to me,About these emerald fields and lawny hills,There linger glories which you cannot see,And influences which you cannot feel,Delight and incommunicable woe!My home is here; and like a patient star,Shining between untroubled ParadiseAnd my own soul, a mother shines therein,The sole perfection of true womanhood:A father—with the wisdom which pertainsTo grey experience, and that stern delightIn naked truth, and reason which belongsTo the intense reflective mind—hath toldHis fifty winters here. And all the hopesWhich gild the present; all the sad regretsWhich dull the past, are present to my soulIn the external forms and colouringsOf this dear valley. Therefore do I yearnTo make its stream flow in undying verse,Low-singing thro’ the labyrinthine dell!

And let forgiving charity precludeHarsh judgments from the singer: not that heFearfully would forestal the righteous word,Blameworthy, spoken in kindness, and that truthWhich sanctions condemnation. Yet, dear Lord,A youthful flattering of the spirit, touchedWith a desire unquenchable, displaysMy hope’s delirium. Oh! if the dreamFade into nothing, into worse than nought,Blackness of darkness like the golden zonesOf an autumnal sunset, and the nightOf unfulfilled ambition closes roundMy destiny, think what an awful hellO’erwhelms the conquer’d soul! Therefore, O menWho guard with jealousy and loving careThe honour of our sacred literature,Read with a kindness born of trustful hope,Forgiving rambling schoolboy thoughts, too plainTo utter with a spasm, or clothe in coldMosaic fretwork of well-pleasing words,Forgiving youth’s vagaries, want of skill,And blind devotional passion for my home!

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