The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Poetical Works of David Gray, by Henry Glassford Bell.

THAT impulse which all beauty gives the soul Is languaged as I sing. For fairer stream Rolled never golden sand unto the sea, Made sweeter music than the Luggie, gloom’d By glens whose melody mingles with her own. The uttered name my inmost being thrills, A word beyond a charm; and if this lay Could smoothly flow along and wind to the end In natural manner, as the Luggie winds Her tortuous waters, then the world would list In sweet enthralment, swallowed up and lost, [4] As he who hears the music that beguiles. For as the pilgrim on warm summer days Pacing the dusty highway, when he sees The limpid silver glide with liquid lapse Between the emerald banks—with inward throe Blesses the clear enticement and partakes, (His hot face meeting its own counterpart Shadowy, from an unvoyageable sky) So would the people in these later days Listen 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 lost Her 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! [5] Thy favours flattered me, thy praise inspired: Thy utter kindness took my heart, and now Thy love alleviates my slow decline.

Beneath an ash in beauty tender leaved, And thro’ whose boughs the glimmering sunshine flow’d In rare ethereal jasper, making cool A chequered shadow in the dark-green grass, I lay enchanted. At my head there bloomed A hedge of sweet-brier, fragrant as the breath Of maid belovëd when her cheek is laid To yours in downy pressure, soft as sleep. A bank of harebells, flowers unspeakable For half-transparent azure, nodding, gleamed As 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 twain [6] Than 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 smoke In airy circles o’er the sycamores Upcurled—a lonely little cloud of blue Above 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 fair In their own season; with the bilberry Of dim and misty blue, to childhood dear. Here, on a sunny August afternoon, A vision stirred my spirit half-awake To fling a purer lustre on those fields That knew my boyish footsteps; and to sing Thy pastoral beauty, Luggie, into fame. Now, while the nights are long, by the dear hearth [7] Of home I write; and ere the mavis trills His smooth notes from the budding boughs of March, While the red windy morning o’er the east Widens, or while the lowly sky of eve Burns like a topaz;—all the dear design May reach completion, married to my song As far as words can syllable desire.

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

Once more, O God, once more before I die, Before blind darkness and the wormy grave Contain me, and my memory fades away Like a sweet-coloured evening, slowly sad— Once more, O God, thy wonders take my soul. A winter day! the feather-silent snow [8] Thickens the air with strange delight, and lays A fairy carpet on the barren lea. No sun, yet all around that inward light Which 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 hands Stands like a mournful phantom), hidden clouds Let fall soft beauty, till each green fir branch Is plumed and tassel’d, till each heather stalk Is delicately fringed. The sycamores, Thro’ all their mystical entanglement Of boughs, are draped with silver. All the green Of sweet leaves playing with the subtle air In dainty murmuring; the obstinate drone Of limber bees that in the monkshood bells House diligent; the imperishable glow Of summer sunshine never more confessed [9] The harmony of nature, the divine Diffusive spirit of the Beautiful. Out in the snowy dimness, half revealed Like ghosts in glimpsing moonshine, wildly run The children in bewildering delight. There is a living glory in the air— A glory in the hush’d air, in the soul A palpitating wonder hush’d in awe.

Softly—with delicate softness—as the light Quickens in the undawned east; and silently— With definite silence—as the stealing dawn Dapples 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 air Shines with mild radiance, as when thro’ a cloud Of semi-lucent vapour shines the moon. I saw last evening (when the ruddy sun, [10] Enlarged and strange, sank low and visibly, Spreading fierce orange o’er the west), a scene Of winter in his milder mood. Green fields, Which no kine cropped, lay damp; and naked trees Threw skeleton shadows. Hedges thickly grown, Twined into compact firmness with no leaves, Trembled in jewelled fretwork as the sun To lustre touched the tremulous waterdrops. Alone, nor whistling as his fellows do In fabling poem and provincial song, The ploughboy shouted to his reeking team; And at the clamour, from a neighbouring field Arose, with whirr of wings, a flock of rooks More 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 red Yet coldly; and before the unwholesome east, Searching the bones and breathing ice, blew down [11] The hill with a dry whistle, by the fire In 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-soft And utter purity of the down-flake Falling upon its fellow with no sound! Unblown by vulgar winds, innumerous flakes Fall gently, with the gentleness of love! Between its spotless-clothëd banks, in clear Pellucid luculence, the Luggie seems [12] Charmed in its course, and with deceptive calm Flows 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 soft Pure uniformity, is gently born Warmth and rich mildness fitting the dead roots For 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 boughs I see a gleaming radiance. Sparkling snow Refined by morning-footed frost so still Mantles each bough; and such a windless hush Breathes thro’ the air, it seems the fairy glen About some phantom palace, pale abode Of fabled Sleeping Beauty. Songless birds Flit restlessly about the breathless wood, [13] Waiting the sudden breaking of the charm; And as they quickly spring on nimble wing From the white twig, a sparkling shower falls Starlike. It is not whiteness, but a clear Outshining of all purity, which takes The winking eyes with such a silvery gleam. No sunshine, and the sky is all one cloud. The vale seems lonely, ghostlike; while aloud The housewife’s voice is heard with doubled sound. I have not words to speak the perfect show; The ravishment of beauty; the delight Of silent purity; the sanctity Of 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 God [14] Speaks in the thunder truly. All around Is loving and continuous deity; His mercy over all His works remains. And surely in the glossy snow there shines Angelic influence—a ministry Devout and heavenly, that with benign Action, amid a wondrous hush lets fall The dazzling garment on the fostered fields.

So thus with fair delapsion softly falls The sacred shower; and when the shortened day Dejected 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 moon Gather the punctual stars. Huge whitened hills Rise glimmering to the blue verge of the night, Ghostlike, and striped with narrow glens of firs Black-waving, solemn. O’er the Luggie stream [15] Gathers a veiny film of ice, and creeps With elfin feet around each stone and reed, Working fine masonry; while o’er the dam Dashing, a noise of waters fills the clear And nitrous air. All the dark wintry hours Sharply the winds from the white level moors Keen whistle. Timorous in homely bed The schoolboy listens, fearful lest gaunt wolves Or beasts, whose uncouth forms in ancient books He has beheld, at creaking shutters pull Howling. And when at last the languid dawn In windy redness re-illumes the east With ineffectual fire, an intense blue Severely vivid o’er the snowy hills Gleams chill, while hazy half-transparent clouds Slow-range the freezing ether of the west. Along the woods the keenly vehement blasts Wail, and disrobe the mantled boughs, and fling A snow-dust everywhere. Thus wears the day: [16] While grandfather over the well-watched fire Hangs cowering, with a cold drop at his nose.

Now underneath the ice the Luggie growls, And to the polished smoothness curlers come Rudely ambitious. Then for happy hours The clinking stones are slid from wary hands, And Barleycorn, 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 glow Sinks large, and all the amber-skirted clouds, His flaming retinue, with dark’ning glow Diverge! The broom is brandished as the sign Of conquest, and impetuously they boast Of how this shot was played—with what a bend Peculiar—the perfection of all art— That stone came rolling grandly to the Tee With victory crown’d, and flinging wide the rest [17] In lordly crash! Within the village inn, What time the stars are sown in ether keen, Clear and acute with brightness; and the moon Sharpens her semicircle; and the air With bleakly shivering sough cuts like a scythe, They by the roaring chimney sit, and quaff The beaded ‘Usqueba’ with sugar dash’d. Oh, when the precious liquid fires the brain To joy, and every heart beats fast with mirth And ancient fellowship, what nervy grasps Of horny hands o’er tables of rough oak! What singing of Lang Syne till teardrops shine And friendships brighten as the evening wanes!

Now the dead earth, wrapt solemnly, expects The punctual resurrection of the Spring. Shackled and bound, the coldly vigilant frost Stiffens all rivers, and with eager power Hardens each glebe. The wasted country owns [18] The keen despotic vehemence of the North; And, with the resignation that obtains Where he is weak and powerless, man awaits, Under God’s mercy, the dissolvent thaw.

O All-beholding, All-informing God Invisible, and only through effects Known and belov’d, unshackle the waste earth! Soul of the incomplete vitality In atom and in man! Soul of all Worlds! Leave not Thy glory vacant, nor afflict With fear and hunger man whom Thou hast made. Thou from Thy chambers waterest the earth; Thou givest snow like wool; and scatterest wide Hoarfrost like ashes. Casting forth Thy ice Like 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] [19]

Soon the frozen air receives the subtle thaw: And suddenly a crawling mist, with rain Impregn’d, the damp day dims, and drizzling drops Proclaim a change. At night across the heavens Swift-journeying, and by a furious wind Squadron’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 star Of living sapphire drooping by her side, A faithful spirit in her lone despair, Outshines the cloudy tempest. Then the shower Falls ceaseless, and night murmurs with the rain. And in the sounding morning what a change! The meadows shine new-washed; while here and there A dusky patch of snow in shelter’d paths Melts lonely. The awakened forest waves With boughs unplumed. The white investiture [20] Of the fair earth hath vanished, and the hills That in the evening sunset glowed with rose And ineffectual baptism of gold, Shine tawdry, crawled upon by the blind rain. Now Luggie thunders down the ringing vale, Tawnily brown, wide-leaving yellow sand Upon the meadow. The South-West, aroused, Blustering in moody kindness, clears the sky To 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; overthrow White crags of vapour in confusion piled Precipitate, high-toppling, undissolved; And while with silent workings they are spread And scattered, broken into ruinous pomp By Thy invisible influence, what calm And sweet disclosure of the upper deep [21] Cerulean, the atmospheric sea! Blow high and sift the earth, thou South-West wind! Now the dull air grows rarer, and no more The stark day thickens towards evenfall; Nor from the solid cloud-gloom drips the rain: But in a sunset mild and beautiful The 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 clouds The eternal hills—bones of the earth—upheave Their deity for worship: but severe Against the clear sky outlined, each sharp crag Uplifts its scarred magnificence to Heaven. From breezy ledge the eagle springs aloft, And, beating boldly up against the wind With inconceivable velocity, Stretches to upper ether, and renews Haughty communion with the regal sun! [22] Blow high, O deep-mouth’d wind from the South-West! And in the caves and hollows of the rocks Moan mournfully, for desolation reigns. Through the unknown abysses and foul chasms, Sacred to horror and eternal damps And darkness ever-cumbent, blindly howl Till the hoarse dragons, wailing in their woe Infernal, answer from accursed dens.

Pleasant to him who long in sick-room pent, Surveying still the same unchanging hills Belted 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 sound And motion of the forest (as a steed When shrills the silver trumpet of the onset), He rushes to communion with old forms. [23] Like a fair picture suddenly uncovered To 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 perceives All things, and his delight is indistinct. Earth’s forms and ever-living beauty strike Amazement through his spirit, till he feels As 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 me Sounds sweetest) with unutterable love I love thee, for each morning as I lie Relaxed and weary with my long disease, One from low grass arises visibly And sings as if it sang for me alone. Among a thousand I could tell the tones Of this, my little sweet hierophant! [24] To fainting heart and the despairing soul What is more soothing than the natural voice Of birds? One Candlemas, many years ago, When weak with pain and sickness, it infused Into my soul a bliss delectable. For suddenly into the misty air A mellow, smooth and liquid music, clear As silver, softer than an organ stop Ere the bass grumbles, rose. The blunted winds, No longer edged severely with keen frost, Forgot to whisper, and a summer-calm Pervaded soul and sense. No violet As yet breathed perfume; from the darkling sward No snowdrop boldly peeped; and even the ash, Whence flowed the sound, unfolded not her buds To blacken while the embryo gathered green. And yet this hardy herald of the Spring Chaunted rich harmony, daintily carved out Her voice, and through her sleek throat sobb’d her soul [25] In a delicious tremble. As she tuned Her pliant song, slow from the closing sky The sacred snow fell calm. Yet through the shower, Hushing all nature into silence, clear The Feltie-flier[B] trilled her slippery close In panting rapture, from the whitening ash. I stood all wonder; and to this late hour Remember the dear song with ravishment; Nor ever comes a merry Candlemas day But I am out to hear. And if perchance Some warbler sprinkle on the vacant air Its homeless notes, the bird seems to my heart The individual bird of comely grey That sang her pliant strain through falling snow.

Now, when the crumbling glebe is by the wind Unbound, and snows adown the mountains hoar [26] Glide liquid, from the furrow loose the plough. Enyoke the willing horses, and upturn With deep-pressed share the saponaceous loam. From morn to even with progression slow The ploughboy cuts his awkward parallels, And soberly imbrowns the decent fields. It was a hazy February day Ten years ago, when I, a boy of ten, Beheld a country ploughing-match. The morn Lighted the east with a dim smoky flare Of leaden purple, as the rumbling wains Each with a plough light-laden (while behind Trotted a horse sleek-comb’d and tail bedight With many coloured ribbons) by our home Went downwards to the rich fat meadow-grounds Bounding the Luggie. Many a herd of beeves Dew-lapp’d had fattened there, and headlong oft O’er the hoof-clattering turf they wildly ran, Lashing with swinging tail the thirsty flies. [27] But now the smooth expanse of level green Was quickly to be changed to sober brown; And twenty ploughs by twenty ploughmen held To 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-side Lonely, these twenty had themselves inured And stubborn’d to perfection. Many a touch And word of honest kindness had been used To the dear faithful horses snooving on In quiet patience, jutting noble chests. Now the big day, expected long, was come: And, with proud shoulders yoked, conscious they stood Patient and unrefusing; while behind, All ready stripped, brown brawny arms displayed— Arms sinewed by long labour—eager swains O’er-leaning slight, with cautious wary hold The plough detain. At the commencing sign [28] A simultaneous noise discordant tears The air thick-closing to a hazy damp. Sudden the horses move, and the clear yokes, Well polished, clatter. With an artful bend The gleaming coulter takes the grass and cuts The greenly tedded blades with nibbling noise Almost unheard. The smooth share follows fast; And from its shining slope the clayey glebe In neat and neighbouring furrows sidelong falls. Thus till the dank, raw-cold, and unpurged day Gathering its rheumy humours threatens rain; And the bleak night steals up the forlorn east. And when the careful verdict is preferr’d By the wise judge (a gray-hair’d husbandman, Himself in his fresh youth a ploughboy keen), Some bosoms fire exultant. Others, slow Their reeking horses harnessed, lag along Heart-sad and weary; and the rumbling noise Of homeward-going carts for miles away Is heard, till night brings silence and repose. [29]

But never with sad motions of the soul, Despairing, yoked his sleek and smoking team For 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 prime Bore to the border-land of wonder. Then I felt the blank in life when dies a friend. Inexplicable emptiness and want Unsatisfied! The unrepealable law Consumed the living while the dead decayed. No more, no more thro’ glorious nights of May We wander, chasing pleasure as of old. First night of May! and the soft-silvered moon Brightens her semicircle in the blue; And ’mid the tawny orange of the west Shines the full star that ushers in the even! [30] On the low meadows by the Luggie-side Gathers a semi-lucent mist, and creeps In busy silence, shrouding golden furze And leafy copsewood. Thro’ the tortuous dell Like an eternal sound the Luggie flows In unreposing melody. And here, Three perfect summers gone, my dear first friend Was with me; and we swore a sudden oath, To travel half-a-dozen miles and court Two sisters, whose sweet faces sunshine kissed To berry brown and country comeliness— Kiss-worthier than the love of Solomon. So singing clearly with a merry heart Old 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 fields We hastened ’mid the mist our footsteps raised Until we reached the moorland. From its bed [31] Among the purplish heather whirring rose The plover, wildly screaming; and from glens Of moaning firs the pheasant’s piercing shriek Discordant sounded. Then, ’mong elder trees Throwing antique fat shadows, soon we saw The window panes, moon-whitened; and low heard Bawtie, the shaggie collie, grumble out His disapproval in a sullen growl. But slyly wearing nearer, cried my friend, “Whisht, Bawtie! Bawtie!” and the fellow came Whining, and laid a wet nose in his palm Obedient, while I tinkled on the panes A fairy summons to the souls within. The door creaked musically, and a face Peeped 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; [32] And sitting round it, many a tale of love Was told, until the chrysolite of dawn Burned in the east, and from the mountain rolled The 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 keeps An early tryste with God, the All in All.

We sat at school together on one seat, Came home together thro’ the lanes, and knew The dunnock’s nest together in the hedge, With smooth blue eggs in cosy brightness warm. And as two youngling kine on cold Spring nights Lie close together on the bleak hill-side For mutual heat, so when a trouble came We crept to one another, growing still True friends in interchange of heart and soul. But suddenly death changed his countenance, [33] And grav’d him in the darkness far from me. O Friendship, prelibation of divine Enjoyment, union exquisite of soul, How many blessings do I owe to thee, How much of incommunicable woe! The daisies bloom among the tall green blades Upon his grave, and listening you may hear The Bothlin make sweet music as she flows; And you may see the poplars by her brink Twinkle 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 sing In village inns what time the silver frost Curtained the panes in silent ministry, Sing old Scotch ballads full of love and woe, While the assimilative snow fell white and calm With ceaseless lapse. And I have seen thee dance [34] Wild galliards with the buxom lasses, far In 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 songs The music and the words ring in my ears, Then Lowland lassie wilt thou go—until My eyes are full of tears, dear heart! dear heart! And I could pass the perilous edge of death To see thy dear, clear face, and hear again The old wild music as of old, of old.

But as the Luggie with a plaintive song Twists thro’ a glen of greenest gloom, and gropes For open sunshine; and, the shadows past, Glides quicker-footed thro’ divided meads With sliding purl, so from that tale of gloom [35] My song with happier motions seeks the calm And quiet smoothness of a silver end. From orient valleys where as lucent dew As ever jewelled Hermon, falls and shines Fulfilled by sunrise; where slant arrow-showers Of golden beams make every twinkling drop A diamond, and every blade of grass A glory;—comes the earth-born wanderer Sweet Luggie, singing. Over the mill-dam Sounding, a cataract in miniature, White-robed it dashes thro’ unceasing mist. Thro’ ivied bridge, adown its rocky bed Shadowed by wavy limes whose branches bend Kissing the wave to ripples, on it purls Abrupt, capricious, past the hazel bower Where marriageable maid is being woo’d; And as on sward of velvet by her side Her lover low reclines, while his dear tongue Voices warm passion—she confiding lays [36] All her mild beauty in his manly breast Blushing. Ah, Luggie! sure you murmur now Clearly and dearly o’er thy pumy stones! And when amid a pause of thought they hear Thy babblement of music, never a shade Darkens their souls. Thy song is happiness, A revelation of sweet sympathies By them interpreted; for never yet Was Nature sullen when the spirit shone. This is in twilight, when that only star White Hesperus from chastest azure grows; And as night trails her thousand shadows slow Over the spinning world, the streamlet sings Her mother earth asleep. O Autumn nights! When skies are deeply blue, and the full moon Soars in voluptuous whiteness, Juno-like, A passionate splendour; when in the great south Orion like a frozen skeleton Hints of his ancient hugeness and mail’d strength; [37] And Cassiopeia glimmers cold and clear Upon her throne of seven diamonds! In the thick-foliaged brake, the nightingale Of Scotland, chirping stonechacker, prolongs With whit, whit, chirr-r the day’s full melody. Far-sounding thro’ blue silence and smooth air, The drumming noise of the hoarse waterfall Is heard unheeded all by homely fires, And heard unheeded all in hazel bower Where love wings hours of serene joy; and still As roams with eerie wail the unbodied wind Thro’ ghostly glen of pine, the maiden clings More closely, till two firm entwining arms Press 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-bell [38] Of 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 scythe Cuts all to wither in the imbrowning sun. Two golden days o’erpast (with eves of cloud Magnificently coloured, heaped and strewn Confusedly) the country lasses come Bare-armed, bare-ancled; and ’mid honest mirth And homely jests with tinkling laughter winged, Gather the fading balm. With kindling eyes, And all the life of maidenhood aflame In little tremulous pants,—they carry light The warm load to the stack. Oh, many a time The old man, building slow the rising stack, Saw and reproved not our wild merriment: Remembering, half-sad, his own fresh youth When beauty was a magic to the soul [39] And a fair face a charm; when a lip-touch Was necromancy; and the perfect life A wondrous yearning after womanhood. But at the breathless nerve-dissolving noon, When hot the undiminished sun downthrows Direct his beams, they from the field retire To cool consoling grove, or haply seek The drowsy pool by beechen shadow chilled, To lave the limbs relaxed. With eager leap, Headlong they plunge from the enamelled bank Into the liquid cold, and slowly move With measured strokes and palms outspread; while oft, When the clear water rises o’er the lip Dallying, they uptilt the swelling chest In unspent vigour. Oh, the pleasant time! Pleasant beneath embowering trees, when day Hides with her silken mists the distant scene And breathes afar a nerve-dissolving steam— [40] Pleasant in sweet consolatory shade To wander pensive. Then the soul serenes The turbulent passions, and in devout trance, Unconscious of celestial power, reveals The God reflected in fair natural forms. For as the Sun disdains the vulgar gaze In his uplifted sphere, yet in the broad Grey Ocean shews a softer face, so God In nature shines. Oh, sweet the bowery path Of fair Glenconner, where in volant youth I saw the heroes of divine Romance. No pathway winding through fresh orange groves, Leading to white Campanian city, set Inviolably by the sapphire sea, Can fair Glenconner’s umbrage-shadowed way Excel. The bird-embowering beechen boughs, Kissing each other, on the dusty way Throw trembling shadows; and when warm west winds [41] Roam hither in voluptuous unconcern, There is a music and a fragrancy Upon Glenconner, like the music hymned By quires angelic on cerulean floors. Deem not I speak in vanity, or speak In false hyperbole, as poets do When languaging in love the radiance Of maids; but there is beauty and delight And passive feeling sweeter than all sense, To him who walks beneath the boughs, and hears The humming music like the sound of seas. There have I dreamed for hours—and gathered there The homely inspiration which fulfils The yearning of my soul. There have I felt The unconfined divinity which lies In beauty; and when the eternal stars Have twinkled silver thro’ illumined leaves, I could not choose but worship. [42]

O fair eves Of undescribable sweetness long ago! When gloaming caught me musing unawares, Musing alone beneath the whispering leaves That overshade Glenconner. Hour of calm Suggestive thought, when, like a robe, the earth Puts on a shadowy pensiveness, and stills The music of her motions multiform. Day lingered in the west; and thro’ a sky Of thinly-waning orange, sullen clouds Of amethyst, with flamy purple edged, Moved evenly in sluggish pilotage. The windless shades of quiet eventide Slow gathered, and the sweet concordant tones Of melody within the leafy brake Died clearly, till the Mavis piped alone; Then softly from the jasper sky, a star Drew radiant silver, brightening as the west Darkened. But ere the semicircled moon [43] Shed her white light adown the lucent air, The Mavis ceased, and thro’ the thin gloom brake The Corncraik’s curious cry, the sylvan voice Of the shy bird that haunts the bladed corn; And suddenly, yet silently, the blue Deepened, until innumerous white stars Thro’ crystal smooth and yielding ether drooped, Not coldly, but in passionate June glow. The Corncraik now, ’mong tall green bladed corn Breasted her eggs with feathers dew-besprent, And stayed her human cry. The silence left A gap within the soul, a sudden grief, An emptiness in the low sighing air. Then swooning through full night, the summer’d earth Bosom’d her children into tender rest; Now delicately chambered ladies breathe Their souls asleep in white-limb’d luxury. O Virgins purest lipped! with snowy lids [44] Soft closed on living eyes! O unkissed cheeks, Half-sunk in pillowy pressure, and round arms In the sweet pettishness of silver dreams Flung warm into the cold unheeding air! Sleep! soft bedewer of infantine eyes, Pouter of rosy little lips! plump hands Are doubled into deeply-dimpled fists And stretched in rosy langour, curls are laid In fragrance on the rounded baby-face, Kiss-worthy darling! Stiller of clear tongues And silvery laughter! Now the musical noise Of little feet is silent, and blue shoes No more come pattering from the nursery door. Death is not of thee, Sleep! Thy calm domain Is tempered with a dreamy bliss, and dimmed With haunted glooms, and richly sanctified With the fine elements of Paradise. Burn in the gleaming sky, ye far-off Stars! And thou, O inoffensive Crescent! lift [45] The wonder of thy softness, the white shell Of thy clear beauty, till the wholesome dawn Wither thy brightness pale, and borrowed pride!

But sleep supine, on indolent afternoon Ere the winds wake, and holy mountain airs Descend, is sweet. Oh, let the bard describe The sacred spot where, underneath the round Green odoriferous sycamore, he lay Sleepless, yet half-asleep, in that one mood When the quick sense is duped, and angel wings Make spiritual music. Sweet and dim The sacred spot, belovëd not alone For its own beauty: but the memories, The pictures of the past which in the mind Arise in fair profusion, each distinct With the soft hue of some peculiar mood, Enchant to living lustre what before Was to the untaught vision simply fair. [46] In a fair valley, carpeted with turf Elastic, sloping upwards from the stream, A rounded sycamore in honied leaves Most plenteous, murmurous with humming bees, Shadows a well. Darkly the crystal wave Gleams cold, secluded; on its polished breast Imaging twining boughs. No pitcher breaks Its natural sleep, except at morn and eve When my good mother thro’ the dewy grass Walks patient with her vessels, bringing home The clear refreshment. Every blowing Spring, A snowdrop, with pure streaks of delicate green Upon its inmost leaves, from withered grass Springs whitely, and within its limpid breast Is mirror’d whitely. Not a finger plucks This hidden beauty; but it blooms and dies, In lonely lustre blooms and lonely dies— Unknown, unloved, save by one simple heart Poetic, the creator of this song. [47] And after this frail luxury hath given Its little life in keeping to the soul Of all the worlds, a robin builds its nest In lowly cleft, a foot or so above The water. His dried leaves, and moss, and grass He hither carries, lining all with hair For softness. I have laid the hand that writes These rhymes belovëd, on the crimson breast, Sleek-soft, that panted o’er the five unborn; While, leaf-hid, o’er me sang the watchful mate Plaintive, and with a sorrow in the song, In silvan nook where anchoret might dwell Contented. Often on September days, When woods were efflorescent, and the fields Refulgent with the bounty of the corn, And warming sunshine filled the breathless air With a pale steam,—in heart-confused mood Have I worn holidays enraptured there; For, O dear God! there is a pure delight [48] In dreaming: in those mental-weary times, When the vext spirit finds a false content In fashioning delusions. Oh, to lie Supinely stretched upon the shaded turf, Beholding thro’ the openings of green leaves White clouds in silence navigating slow Cerulean seas illimitable! Hushed The drowsy noon, and, with a stilly sound Like harmony of thought, the Luggie frets— Its bubbling mellowed to a musical hum By distance. Then the influences faint, Those visionary impulses that swell The soul to inspiration, crowding come Mysterious: and phantom memory (Ghost of dead feeling) haunts the undissolved, The unsubvertive temple of the soul!

But as thro’ loamy meadows lipping slow Eats the fern-fringëd Luggie; and in spray [49] Leaps the mill-dam, and o’er the rocky flats Spreads in black eddies; so my firstborn song Hastes to the end in heedless vagrancy. O ravishingly sweet the clacking noise Of looms that murmur in our quiet dell! No fairer valley Dyer ever dreamed— Dyer, best river-singer, bard among Ten thousand. Reader, hasten ye and come, And see the Luggie wind her liquid stream Thro’ copsy villages and spiry towns; And see the Bothlin trotting swift of foot From glades of alder, eager to combine Her dimpling harmony with Luggie’s calm Clear 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 come A summer pilgrim to our valley fair), [50] The Luggie flows with bells of foam-like stars About its surface. A smooth bleaching-green Spreads its soft carpet to the open doors Of simple houses, shining-white. Blue smoke Curls thro’ the breathing air to the tree-tops Thin spreading, and is lost. A humming noise Industrious is heard, the clack of looms, Whereon sit maidens, homely fair, and full Of household simpleness, who sing and weave, And sing and weave thro’ all the easy hours, Each day to-morrow’s counterpart, and smooth Memory the mirror wherein golden Hope, Contented, sees herself. Here dwell an old Couple whose lives have known twice forty years (My mother’s parents), their sage spirits touched With blest anticipation of a home Celestial bright, wherein they may fulfil The life which death discovers. Last winter night I, an accustomed visitant, beheld [51] The dear old pair. He in an easy chair Lay dozing, while beside her noiseless wheel She 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 floor Lay stretched in early slumber; all the three Unconscious 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 sons An equal number. Some of them died young, But six are yet alive, and dwelling all Within a mile of her own house. The flower, The idol of the mother, and her pride, Dear magnet of all hopes, embodiment Of heavenly blessings, was the youngest son, Youngest of all. Me often has she told [52] How not a man could fling the stone with him; That in his shoes he outran racers fleet Barefooted; dancing on the shaven green On summer holidays and autumn eves (As to this day they do) his laugh was clearest, Lightest his step; and he could thrill the hearts Of 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, picturing A smooth ambition and calm happiness For years of weaker age—but suddenly In prime of life there flowered in his soul An inextinguishable love to be A minister of God. When holy schemes Govern the motions of the spirit, ways Are found to compass them. With wary care, Frugality praiseworthy, and the strength [53] Of two strong arms, he in the summer months Hoarded a competence equivalent To all demands, until the session’s end. Whate’er by manual labour he had gained Thro’ 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 hope Eager his mother dreamed, or garrulous Spake of him everywhere—his foreign ways, And midnight porings o’er uncanny books. His father, with a stern delight suffused, Grew a proud man of some importance now In his own eyes; for who in all the vale Had e’er a son so noble and so learned, So worthy as his own? So time wore on: but when three years complete [54] Had 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 came Sorrow. A hue too beautifully fair Brighten’d his cheek, as sunlight tints a cloud. His face had caught a trick of joy more sad Than visible grief; and all the subtle frame Of human life, so wonderfully wrought, A mystery of mechanism, was wearing In sore uneasy manner to the grave. What need to tell what every heart must know In sympathy prophetical? Long time, A varied year in seasons four complete (For the white snowdrop o’er my mother’s well Twice oped its whitest leaves among the green), He lay consuming. It must needs have been A weary trial to the thinking soul, Thus with a consciousness of coming death, [55] The grim Attenuation! evermore Nearing insatiate. At her spinning-wheel His 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 hope To nourish to its fading. But his breath Grew weaker ever; and his dry pale lips Closing 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 tones Tinkled the weary summons. Thus his time Narrowed to a completion, and his soul, Immortal in its nature, thro’ his eyes Yearning, beheld the majesty of Him Great in His mystery of godliness, Fulfiller of the dim Apocalypse! [56] Twelve years have passed since then, and he is now A happy memory in the hearts of those Who 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 us Doth perfectly? and let him that is proud Take heed lest he do fall) he would have been A sadness to them in their aged hours. But now he is an honour and delight; A treasure of the memory; a joy Unutterable: by the lone fireside They never tire to speak his praise, and say How, if he had been spared, he would have been So great, and good, and noble as (they say) The country knows; although I know full well That not a man in all the parish round Speaks of him ever; he is now forgot, And this his natal valley knows him not.— [57] And this his natal valley knows him not? The well-belovëd, nothing?—the fair face And pliant limbs, poor indistinctive dust? The body, blood, and network of the brain Crumbled as a clod crumbles! Is this all? A turf, a date, an epitaph, and then Oblivion, 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 smiles In loving-kindness; but, like a light dream Of morning, man arises in fair show, Like the hued rainbow from incumbent gloom Elicited, he shines against the sun— A momentary glory. Not a voice Remains to whisper of his whereabouts: The palpable body in its mother’s breast Dissolves, and every feature of the face [58] Is 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’ sin God’s Spirit to contain. Earth, wrap it close Till the heavens vibrate to the trump of doom!

This is not all: for the invisible soul Betrays the soft desire, the quenchless wish, To live a purer life, more proximate To the prime Fountain of all life. The power Of vivid fancy and the boundless scenes (High coloured with the colouring of Heaven), Creations of imagination, tell The mortal yearnings of immortal souls! Now, while around me in blind labour winds Howl, and the rain-drops lash the streaming pane; Now, while the pine-glen on the mountain side Roars in its wrestling with the sightless foe, [59] And the black tarn grows hoary with the storm;— Amid the external elemental war, My soul with calm comportment—more becalmed By the wild tempest furious without— Sits in her sacred cell, and ruminates On Death, severe discloser of new life. When the well-known and once embraceable form Is but a handful of white dust, the soul Grows in divine dilation, nearer God. Therefore grieve not, my heart, that unsustained His memory died among us, that no more, While yet the grass is hoary and the dawn Lingers, he shyly thro’ untrodden fields Brushes his early path: that he no more Beneath the beech, in lassitude outstretched, Ponders the holy strains of Israel’s King; For in translated glory, and new clothed With Incorruptible, he purer air Breathes in a fairer valley. There no storm [60] Maddens 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 been A crownëd vision and a silver dream, That I should touch this valley with renown Eternal, make the fretting waters gleam In 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 Paradise [61] And my own soul, a mother shines therein, The sole perfection of true womanhood: A father—with the wisdom which pertains To grey experience, and that stern delight In naked truth, and reason which belongs To the intense reflective mind—hath told His fifty winters here. And all the hopes Which gild the present; all the sad regrets Which dull the past, are present to my soul In the external forms and colourings Of this dear valley. Therefore do I yearn To make its stream flow in undying verse, Low-singing thro’ the labyrinthine dell!

And let forgiving charity preclude Harsh judgments from the singer: not that he Fearfully would forestal the righteous word, Blameworthy, spoken in kindness, and that truth Which sanctions condemnation. Yet, dear Lord, [62] A youthful flattering of the spirit, touched With a desire unquenchable, displays My hope’s delirium. Oh! if the dream Fade into nothing, into worse than nought, Blackness of darkness like the golden zones Of an autumnal sunset, and the night Of unfulfilled ambition closes round My destiny, think what an awful hell O’erwhelms the conquer’d soul! Therefore, O men Who guard with jealousy and loving care The honour of our sacred literature, Read with a kindness born of trustful hope, Forgiving rambling schoolboy thoughts, too plain To utter with a spasm, or clothe in cold Mosaic fretwork of well-pleasing words, Forgiving youth’s vagaries, want of skill, And blind devotional passion for my home! [63]

ENTER, scared mortal! and in awe behold The chancel of a dying poet’s mind, Hung round, ah! not adorned, with pictures bold And quaint, but roughly touched for the refined. The chancel not the charnel house! For I To God have raised a shrine immaculate Therein, whereon His name to glorify, And daily mercies meekly celebrate. So in, scared breather! here no hint of death— Skull or cross-bones suggesting sceptic fear; Yea rather calmer beauty, purer breath Inhaled from a diviner atmosphere. [66]

IF it must be; if it must be, O God! That I die young, and make no further moans; That, underneath the unrespective sod, In unescutcheoned privacy, my bones Shall crumble soon,—then give me strength to bear The last convulsive throe of too sweet breath! I tremble from the edge of life, to dare The dark and fatal leap, having no faith, No glorious yearning for the Apocalypse; But, like a child that in the night-time cries For light, I cry; forgetting the eclipse Of knowledge and our human destinies. O peevish and uncertain soul! obey The law of life in patience till the Day. [67]

“WHOM the gods love die young.” The thought is old; And yet it soothed the sweet Athenian mind. I take it with all pleasure, overbold, Perhaps, yet to its virtue much inclined By an inherent love for what is fair. This is the utter poetry of woe— That the bright-flashing gods should cure despair By love, and make youth precious here below. I die, being young; and, dying, could become A pagan, with the tender Grecian trust. Let death, the fell anatomy, benumb The hand that writes, and fill my mouth with dust— Chant no funereal theme, but, with a choral Hymn, O ye mourners! hail immortal youth auroral! [68]

WITH the tear-worthy four, consumption killed In youthful prime, before the nebulous mind Had its symmetric shapeliness defined, Had its transcendent destiny fulfilled.— May future ages grant me gracious room, With Pollok, in the voiceless solitude Finding his holiest rapture, happiest mood; Poor White for ever poring o’er the tomb; With Keats, whose lucid fancy mounting far Saw heaven as an intenser, a more keen Redintegration of the Beauty seen And felt by all the breathers on this star; With gentle Bruce, flinging melodious blame Upon the Future for an uncompleted name. [69]

OH many a time with Ovid have I borne My father’s vain, yet well-meant reprimand, To leave the sweet-air’d, clover-purpled land Of rhyme—its Lares loftily forlorn, With all their pure humanities unworn— To batten on the bare Theologies! To quench a glory lighted at the skies, Fed on one essence with the silver morn, Were of all blasphemies the most insane. So deeplier given to the delicious spell I clung to thee, heart-soothing Poesy! Now on a sick-bed rack’d with arrowy pain I lift white hands of gratitude, and cry, Spirit of God in Milton! was it well? [70]

LAST night, on coughing slightly with sharp pain, There came arterial blood, and with a sigh Of absolute grief I cried in bitter vein, That drop is my death-warrant: I must die. Poor meagre life is mine, meagre and poor! Rather a piece of childhood thrown away; An adumbration faint; the overture To stifled music; year that ends in May; The sweet beginning of a tale unknown; A dream unspoken; promise unfulfilled; A morning with no noon, a rose unblown— All its deep rich vermilion crushed and killed I’ th’ bud by frost:—Thus in false fear I cried, Forgetting that to abolish death Christ died. [71]

SWEETLY, my mother! Go not yet away— I have not told my story. Oh, not yet, With the fair past before me, can I lay My cheek upon the pillow to forget. O sweet, fair past, my twenty years of youth Thus thrown away, not fashioning a man; But fashioning a memory, forsooth! More feminine than follower of Pan. O God! let me not die for years and more! Fulfil Thyself; and I will live then surely Longer than a mere childhood. Now heart-sore, Weary, with being weary—weary, purely. In dying, mother, I can find no pleasure Except in being near thee without measure. [72]

HEW Atlas for my monument; upraise A pyramid for my tomb, that, undestroyed By rank, oblivion, and the hungry void, My name shall echo through prospective days. O careless conqueror! cold, abysmal grave! Is it not sad—is it not sad, my heart— To smother young ambition, and depart Unhonoured and unwilling, like death’s slave? No rare immortal remnant of my thought Embalms my life; no poem, firmly reared Against the shock of time, ignobly feared— But all my life’s progression come to nought. Hew Atlas! build a pyramid in a plain! Oh, cool the fever burning in my brain! [73]

FROM this entangling labyrinthine maze Of doctrine, creed, and theory; from vague Vain speculations; the detested plague Of spiritual pride, and vile affrays Sectarian, good Lord, deliver me! Nature! thy placid monitory glory Shines uninterrogated, while the story Goes round of this and that theology, This creed, and that, till patience close the list. Once more on Carronben’s wind-shrilling height To sit in sovereign solitude, and quite Forget the hollow world—a pantheist Beyond Bonaventura! This were cheer Passing the tedious tale of shallow pulpiteer. [74]

A VALE of tears, a wilderness of woe, A sad unmeaning mystery of strife; Reason with Passion strives, and Feeling ever Battles with Conscience, clear eyed arbiter. Thus spake I in sad mood not long ago, To my dear father, of this human life, Its jars and phantasies. Soft answered he, With soul of love strong as a mountain river: We make ourselves—Son, you are what you are Neither by fate nor providence nor cause External: all unformed humanity Waiteth the stamp of individual laws; And as you love and act, the plastic spirit Doth the impression evermore inherit. [75]

LAST Autumn we were four, and travelled far With Phœbe in her golden plenilune, O’er stubble-fields where sheaves of harvest boon Stood slanted. Many a clear and stedfast star Twinkled its radiance thro’ crisp-leaved beeches, Over the farm to which, with snatches rare Of ancient ballads, songs, and saucy speeches, He hurried, happy mad. Then each had there A dove-eyed sister pining for him, four Fair ladies legacied with loveliness, Chaste as a group of stars, or lilies blown In rural nunnery. O God! Thy sore Strange ways expound. Two to the grave have gone Without apparent reason more or less. [76]

NOW, while the long-delaying ash assumes The delicate April green, and, loud and clear, Through the cool, yellow, mellow twilight glooms, The thrush’s song enchants the captive ear; Now, while a shower is pleasant in the falling, Stirring the still perfume that wakes around; Now, that doves mourn, and from the distance calling, The cuckoo answers, with a sovereign sound,— Come, with thy native heart, O true and tried! But leave all books; for what with converse high, Flavoured with Attic wit, the time shall glide On smoothly, as a river floweth by, Or as on stately pinion, through the grey Evening, the culver cuts his liquid way. [77]

WHY are all fair things at their death the fairest: Beauty the beautifullest in decay? Why doth rich sunset clothe each closing day With ever-new apparelling the rarest? Why are the sweetest melodies all born Of pain and sorrow? Mourneth not the dove, In the green forest gloom, an absent love? Leaning her breast against that cruel thorn, Doth not the nightingale, poor bird, complain And integrate her uncontrollable woe To such perfection, that to hear is pain? Thus, Sorrow and Death—alone realities— Sweeten their ministration, and bestow On troublous life a relish of the skies! [78]

AND, well-belovëd, is this all, this all? Gone, like a vapour which the potent morn Kills, and in killing glorifies! I call Through the lone night for thee, my dear first-born Soul-fellow! but my heart vibrates in vain. Ah! well I know, and often fancy forms The weather-blown churchyard where thou art lain— The churchyard whistling to the frequent storms. But down the valley, by the river side, Huge walnut-trees—bronze-foliaged, motionless As leaves of metal—in their shadows hide Warm nests, low music, and true tenderness. But thou, betrothed! art far from me, from me. O heart! be merciful—I loved him utterly. [79]

FATHER! when I have passed, with deathly swoon, Into the ghost-world, immaterial, dim, O may nor time nor circumstance dislimn My image from thy memory, as noon Steals from the fainting bloom the cooling dew! Like flower, itself completing bud and bell, In lonely thicket, be thy sorrow true, And in expression secret. Worse than hell To see the grave hypocrisy—to hear The crocodilian sighs of summer friends Outraging grief’s assuasive, holy ends! But thou art faithful, father, and sincere; And in thy brain the love of me shall dwell Like the memorial music in the curved sea-shell. [80]

FROM my sick-bed gazing upon the west, Where all the bright effulgencies of day Lay steeped in sunless vapours, raw and gray,— Herein (methought) is mournfully exprest The end of false ambitions, sullen doom Of my brave hopes, Promethean desires: Barren and perfumeless, my name expires Like summer-day setting in joyless gloom. Yet faint I not in sceptical dismay, Upheld by the belief that all pure thought Is deathless, perfect: that the truths out-wrought By the laborious mind cannot decay, Being evolutions of that Sovereign Mind Akin to man’s; yet orbed, exhaustless, undefined. [81]

THE daisy-flower is to the summer sweet, Though utterly unknown it live and die; The spheral harmony were incomplete Did the dew’d laverock mount no more the sky, Because her music’s linkëd sorcery Bewitched no mortal heart to heavenly mood. This is the law of nature, that the deed Should dedicate its excellence to God, And in so doing find sufficient meed. Then why should I make these heart-burning cries, In sickly rhyme with morbid feeling rife, For fame and temporal felicities? Forgetting that in holy labour lies The scholarship severe of human life. [82]

O GOD, it is a terrible thing to die Into the inextinguishable life; To leave this known world with a feeble cry, All its poor jarring and ignoble strife. O that some shadowy spectre would disclose The Future, and the soul’s confineless hunger Satisfy with some knowledge of repose! For here the lust of avarice waxeth stronger, Making life hateful; youth alone is true, Full of a glorious self-forgetfulness: Better to die inhabiting the new Kingdom of faith and promise, and confess, Even in the agony and last eclipse, Some revelation of the Apocalypse! [83]

WISE in his day that heathen emperor, To whom, each morrow, came a slave, and cried— “Philip, remember thou must die;” no more. To me such daily voice were misapplied— Disease guests with me; and each cough, or cramp, Or aching, like the Macedonian slave, Is my memento mori. ’Tis the stamp Of God’s true life to be in dying brave. “I fear not death, but dying”[C]—not the long Hereafter, sweetened by immortal love; But the quick, terrible last breath—the strong Convulsion. Oh, my Lord of breath above! Grant me a quiet end, in easeful rest— A sweet removal, on my mother’s breast. [84]

OCTOBER’S gold is dim—the forests rot, The weary rain falls ceaseless, while the day Is wrapp’d in damp. In mire of village way The hedge-row leaves are stamp’d, and, all forgot, The broodless nest sits visible in the thorn. Autumn, among her drooping marigolds, Weeps all her garnered sheaves, and empty folds, And dripping orchards—plundered and forlorn. The season is a dead one, and I die! No more, no more for me the spring shall make A resurrection in the earth and take The death from out her heart—O God, I die! The cold throat-mist creeps nearer, till I breathe Corruption. Drop, stark night, upon my death! [85]

DIE down, O dismal day! and let me live. And come, blue deeps! magnificently strewn With coloured clouds—large, light, and fugitive— By upper winds through pompous motions blown. Now it is death in life—a vapour dense Creeps round my window till I cannot see The far snow-shining mountains, and the glens Shagging the mountain-tops. O God! make free This barren, shackled earth, so deadly cold— Breathe gently forth Thy spring, till winter flies In rude amazement, fearful and yet bold, While she performs her custom’d charities. I weigh the loaded hours till life is bare— O God! for one clear day, a snowdrop, and sweet air! [86]

SOMETIMES, when sunshine and blue sky prevail— When spent winds sleep, and, from the budding larch, Small birds, with incomplete, vague sweetness, hail The unconfirmed, yet quickening life of March,— Then say I to myself, half-eased of care, Toying with hope as with a maiden’s token— “This glorious, invisible fresh air Will clear my blood till the disease be broken.” But slowly, from the wild and infinite west, Up-sails a cloud, full-charged with bitter sleet. The omen gives my spirit deep unrest; I fling aside the hope, as indiscreet— A false enchantment, treacherous and fair— And sink into my habit of despair. [87]

O WINTER! wilt thou never, never go? O Summer! but I weary for thy coming; Longing once more to hear the Luggie flow, And frugal bees laboriously humming. Now, the east wind diseases the infirm, And I must crouch in corners from rough weather. Sometimes a winter sunset is a charm— When the fired clouds, compacted, blaze together, And the large sun dips, red, behind the hills. I, from my window, can behold this pleasure; And the eternal moon, what time she fills Her orb with argent, treading a soft measure, With queenly motion of a bridal mood, Through the white spaces of infinitude. [88]

OH, beautiful moon! Oh, beautiful moon! again Thou persecutest me until I bend My brow, and soothe the aching of my brain. I cannot see what handmaidens attend Thy silver passage as the heaven clears; For, like a slender mist, a sweet vexation Works in my heart, till the impulsive tears Confess the bitter pain of adoration. Oh, too, too beautiful moon! lift the white shell Of thy soft splendour through the shining air! I own the magic power, the witching spell, And, blinded by thy beauty, call thee fair! Alas! not often now thy silver horn Shall me delight with dreams and mystic love forlorn! [89]

’TIS April, yet the wind retains its tooth. I cannot venture in the biting air, But sit and feign wild trash, and dreams uncouth, “Stretched on the rack of a too easy chair.” And when the day has howled itself to sleep, The lamp is lighted in my little room; And lowly, as the tender lapwings creep, Comes my own mother, with her love’s perfume. O living sons with living mothers! learn Their worth, and use them gently, with no chiding For youth, I know, is quick; of temper stern Sometimes; and apt to blunder without guiding. So was I long, but now I see her move, Transfigured in the radiant mist of love. [90]

LYING awake at holy eventide, While in clear mournfulness the throstle’s hymn Hushes the night, and the great west, grown dim, Laments the sunset’s evanescent pride: Lo! behold an orb of silver brightly Grow from the fringe of sunset, like a dream From Thought’s severe infinitude, and nightly Show forth God’s glory in its sacred gleam. Ah, Hesper! maidenliest star that ere Twinkled in firmament! cool gloaming’s prime Cheerer, whose fairness maketh wondrous fair Old pastorals, and the Spenserian rhyme:— Thy soft seduction doth my soul enthral Like music, with a dying, dying fall! [91]

THERE are three bonnie Scottish melodies, So native to the music of my soul, That of its humours they seem prophecies. The ravishment of Chaucer was less whole, Less perfect, when the April nightingale Let itself in upon him. Surely, Lord! Before whom psaltery and clarichord, Concentual with saintly song, prevail, There lurks some subtle sorcery, to Thee And heaven akin, in each woe-burning air! Land of the Leal, and Bonnie Bessie Lee, And Home, sweet Home, the lilt of love’s despair. Now, in remembrance even, the feelings speak, For lo! a shower of grace is on my cheek. [92]

“Thou art wearin’ awa’, Jean, Like snaw when it’s thaw, Jean; Thou art wearin’ awa’ To the land o’ the leal.”

O THE impassable sorrow, mother mine! Of the sweet, mournful air which, clear and well, For me thou singest! Never the divine Mahomedan harper, famous Israfel, Such rich enchanting luxury of woe Elicited from all his golden strings! Therefore, dear singer sad! chant clear, and low, And lovingly, the bard’s imaginings, O poet unknown! conning thy verses o’er In lone, dim places, sorrowfully sweet; And O musician! touching the quick core Of pity, when thy skilful closes meet— My tears confess your witchery as they flow, Since I, too, wear away like the enduring snow. [93]

UPLIFT in unparticipated night Oh indefinable Being! far retired From mortal ken in uncreated light: While demonstrating glories unacquired When shall the wavering sciences evolve The infinite secret, Thee? What mind shall scan The tenour of Thy workmanship, or solve The dark, perplexing destiny of man? Oh! in the hereafter border-land of wonder, Shall the proud world’s inveterate tale be told, The curtain of all mysteries torn asunder, The cerements from the living soul unrolled? Impatient questioner, soon, soon shall death Reveal to thee these dim phantasmata of faith. [94]

AND thus proceeds the mode of human life From mystery to mystery again; From God to God, thro’ grandeur, grief, and strife, A hurried plunge into the dark inane Whence we had lately sprung. And is’t for ever? Ah! sense is blind beyond the gaping clay, And all the eyes of faith can see it never. We know the bright-haired sun will bring the day, Like glorious book of silent prophecy; Majestic night assume her starry throne; The wondrous seasons come and go: but we Die, unto mortal ken for ever gone. Who shall pry further? who shall kindle light In the dread bosom of the infinite? [95]

O THOU of purer eyes than to behold Uncleanness! sift my soul, removing all Strange thoughts, imaginings fantastical, Iniquitous allurements manifold. Make it into a spiritual ark; abode Severely sacred, perfumed, sanctified, Wherein the Prince of Purities may abide— The holy and eternal Spirit of God. The gross, adhesive loathsomeness of sin, Give me to see. Yet, O far more, far more, That beautiful purity which the saints adore In a consummate Paradise within The Veil,—O Lord, upon my soul bestow, An earnest of that purity here below. [96]

JOHN Frost, old Nature’s jeweller, had beautified the leas, And the lustre of his fretwork was twinkling on the trees, As we ramble o’er the meadows in a meditative ease.

We had left the town behind us for a roaming holiday, Beneath an arc of gloom, all dark and indistinct it lay, And the fog was wreathed about it like a robe of iron-gray. [100]

But a carpeting of leaflets, and a canopy of blue, And the mystery of ether as the warming sunshine grew, Sent a mellow thrill of happiness our eager spirits through.

And over lanes, where Winter bluff had shook his hoary beard, Where in the naked hedgerows the broodless nests appear’d, And the brown leaves of the beech-tree were with silver gloss veneer’d.

We wandered and we pondered till half the morn was spent, And the red orb through the tangled boughs his cunning vigour sent, And the valley mists all melted at his glance omnipotent. [101]

Dim on a sloping hill-side, clothed in a misty pall, Stands a turret grey and hoary, where the ancient ivies crawl, Their Arab arms round casement, sill, and door, and mould’ring wall.

And there we halted half-an-hour within a roofless hall, ’Neath a bower of wildest ivy hanging downwards from the wall, Bearing in its grand luxuriance a flower funereal.

There we talked of the gay plumes erst bent to pass the lintel old, The maidens that were moved to smile at gallant wooers bold, The jovial nights of brave carouse, the wine-cups manifold. [102]

And all the faded glories of the mediæval time, When the age was in its manhood, and the land was in its prime, And manly deeds were chanted in a bold heroic rhyme.

Then, plucking each a sprig, bedecked with simple yellow flower, We scrambled sadly downwards from our old enchanted bower, And the glory of the sunshine fell upon us like a shower.

Once more beneath the concave of a clear effulgent sky, Where flocks of cawing rooks to the mansion wavered by— A mansion standing coldly ’mid a windy rookery. [103]

And over breezy mountains, where the poacher, with his gun, Stood lonely as a boulder-stone ’tween earth and shining sun, We wandered and we pondered till the winter day was done. [104]

OH, many a leaf will fall to-night, As she wanders through the wood! And many an angry gust will break The dreary solitude. I wonder if she’s past the bridge, Where Luggie moans beneath; While rain-drops clash in slanted lines On rivulet and heath. Disease hath laid his palsied palm Upon my aching brow; [105] The headlong blood of twenty-one Is thin and sluggish now. ’Tis nearly ten! A fearful night, Without a single star To light the shadow on her soul With sparkle from afar: The moon is canopied with clouds, And her burden it is sore;— What would wee Jackie do, if he Should never see her more? Aye, light the lamp, and hang it up At the window fair and free; ’Twill be a beacon on the hill To let your mother see. And trim it well, my little Ann, For the night is wet and cold, And you know the weary, winding way Across the miry wold. All drenched will be her simple gown, [106] And the wet will reach her skin: I wish that I could wander down, And the red quarry win— To take the burden from her back, And place it upon mine; With words of kind condolence, To bid her not repine. You have a kindly mother, dears, As ever bore a child, And heaven knows I love her well In passion undefiled. Ah me! I never thought that she Would brave a night like this, While I sat weaving by the fire A web of phantasies. How the winds beat this home of ours With arrow-falls of rain; This lonely home upon the hill They beat with might and main. [107] And ’mid the tempest one lone heart Anticipates the glow, Whence, all her weary journey done, Shall happy welcome flow. ’Tis after ten! Oh, were she here, Young man altho’ I be, I could fall down upon her neck, And weep right gushingly! I have not loved her half enough, The dear old toiling one, The silent watcher by my bed, In shadow or in sun. [108]

“Happy child! Thou art so exquisitely wild, I think of thee with many tears, For what may be thy lot in future years.” Wordsworth.

THE goldening peach on the orchard wall, Soft feeding in the sun, Hath never so downy and rosy a cheek As this laughing little one. The brook that murmurs and dimples alone Through glen, and grove, and lea, Hath never a life so merry and true As my brown little brother of three. [109] From flower to flower, and from bower to bower, In my mother’s garden green, A-peering at this, and a-cheering at that, The funniest ever was seen;— Now throwing himself in his mother’s lap, With his cheek upon her breast, He tells his wonderful travels, forsooth! And chatters himself to rest. And what may become of that brother of mine, Asleep in his mother’s bosom? Will the wee rosy bud of his being, at last Into a wild flower blossom? Will the hopes that are deepening as silent and fair As the azure about his eye, Be told in glory and motherly pride, Or answered with a sigh? Let the curtain rest: for, alas! ’tis told That Mercy’s hand benign Hath woven and spun the gossamer thread [110] That forms the fabric fine. Then dream, dearest Jackie! thy sinless dream, And waken as blythe and as free; There’s many a change in twenty long years, My brown little brother of three. [111]

THIS is my last and farewell place on earth, In this unlevel square of soft green-sward. I love it well. Beneath no trailing vine, No prairie grass, no moaning yew tree’s shade, Within no hollow hard sarcophagus, No barrëd tomb, I hope I e’er shall lie; But, happed with daisy-mingled grass, where oft, On Sabbath eve, when everything is still, And every little glen within itself Is heard to chaunt its masses o’er the sun, [112] Already shrouded with his blood-stained robes, Some mindful ones will drop a ready tear To nurture a white daisy, and will breathe A gushing prayer of sighs to him below. I shall not feel their footsteps over me; I shall not hear their long-known voices speak; For I’ll be dead. Oh! dead! and yet why weep? Oh! earthly hearts are weak to think of death! And ’tis a cutting thought to see our hopes All shivered like a bunch of autumn leaves, And sunset games, and love—delightful love— All buried in a grave. Yet it must come.

The wreck of centuries is buried here; The very monuments are hoar with age; The empty tower that sentinels them all Wails when the gusts wild wander o’er the earth, And creaks the rusty gate with careless Time. [113] Methinks I see the silent funeral Wend slowly up this hill with soulless load. Backward swings sullen the disusëd gate, And quiet, with measured steps, they enter here, And cross the moundy sward, amongst the stones, To where the red clay gapes. How mournfully Are the last rites paid to a fleshly frame! Behold the old man with the sunken eyes And broken heart. This was his eldest-born. A black-eyed boy he was, and in his youth He was his joy and hope. And oft he gazed Into his laughing face, and dreamed of times When in his youthful strength he would him shield, And help him to the stone before the door In summer time, when streamlets murmured clear. So he grew up, but scorned the homely ways Of the grey place of his nativity. He saw the sun rise from behind the hills, His well-thumbed book firm clasped in his young hand. [114] He saw it sink within the breezy glen, And all the birds shrink from its burning face To shade in nests, his book firm clasped in hand. But most he pondered over nature’s book— The bubbled rill and the green-bladed corn, The lowly wild-flowers and the leafy trees Alive with music. His father wondered strange, And prouder grew of his bold quiet son, Who spoke without restraint or lowly eye Unto God’s minister. And he would tell At other fire-sides of his wondrous ways, The oft-trimmed lamp when others were indrawn; Nor did he check the working of the mind And wearing of the flesh. He knew no harm. So time grew older still, and he went off, With paler face and heavier looks, to where The sons of learning prosecute their toils. [115]

But here he pined like a transplanted flower Borne from its native soil. No grass was here, Where he might lie, and watch the mighty clouds All floating in the blue. No lark was here, In love with angels, but the place was lone And dark and cold. No milkmaid’s song was here, Hushed when he passed upon the mountain side, And anxious eye that gazed till he was gone. And ’mid the throng of battling human kind, No simple eye nor horny hand sought his, Or voice, with homely accents, spoke relief. All was unknown, unheeded, but his books, Which were his very self, his only friend.

And rich he was in lore, and strong in hope, But heaven was panting for an inmate more: In heaven his place was vacant; as at home. And time grew older still, and he came home To see his father, but he ne’er went back. His body could not hold his restless soul, [116] That longed, with eagle strength, to pierce the clouds, And so it burst this yielding bond on earth, Already, by a lengthened struggle, weak. His father saw him die. He never left His bedside; but with eyes that seemed as glazed, For ever staring at the sharpened face, He stood and stood and wept not. In that time His son saw heaven and chided all delay. His father knew not of the words of blame That blest his dying breath. He seized the clay, And clutched it desperately unto his breast. The arms fell down, nor gave returning press. And that crush broke the doting father’s heart. This is the grave beside that white gravestone: Hold back the nettles while I read its lay:—

Epitaph. [117]

Beneath me lies the rotting faded mask Of a young mind that studied heaven well; Ne’er in the sun of pleasure did he bask, But loved hope’s shadow and fair virtue’s dell. He died while on the road to yonder sky, And every one that wanders careless here, Tread soft, and hark! Is not time hurrying by? Begone and pray; the Day of Judgment’s near!

I have seen children playing in this place, Have heard the voice of psalms sound plaintive here, And sighs commingle with these strains of love, For memory is dewy with salt tears.

Yet some lie here unknown to all. They came Parentless, and they died and buried were By careless hands, that threw the wormy clods All hastily upon the coffin lid And then went home. Perhaps some empty chair, Like to a last year’s nest, still waits for them. Perhaps a nightly prayer still ascends [118] Among the breathings of a family home, To hasten their return. Let us away And gather stones and place them at their heads.

Could all the tales that wait around the graves, Like volumes of wet sighs, be garnered up: How hollow would each swelling heap resound.

Here one who died in mirth, and while the laugh, The merry laugh of joy did paint his face, Death frowned, and smote the smiling victim dead.

Here one who wept to see the flushing sun Glide reddening from his window bars, and set To rise again, and dry the silent dew From his damp grave. [119]

Here one who lingered long, And every morn the fields missed knots of flowers Borne to his bedside. And his eyes grew wild When the sun’s withering gaze stared in upon them, And he would press them to his fluttering heart, And face the mighty orb, defiant-like, As if to hurl it from the empty sky, For daring thus to blight his darling flowers. Poor fellow, he was mad.

May God forbid That clownish foot should crush the gentle clay, Or break the daisy stalks or primrose buds, That bloom beside the low white marble stone In yon lone spot. [120]

“I did hear you talk Far above singing; after you were gone, I grew acquainted with my heart, and searched What stirred it so! Alas! I found it love.”

I ’VE sung of flowers in loving way, And pluck’d them too for half a day, And into posies wrought them, till Orion glared above the hill: But never, never saw I one As fair as thee beneath the sun, And never, never shall I know A lovelier where’er I go. [121] Yet ’tis not for thy beauty, dear Jeanette, nor yet the sunny cheer About thy face, I love thee so! But something of thy soul doth flow Into my heart, and I am wild With tender passion as a child.

I write thy name, and kiss it, dear Jeanette, in most impulsive fear! I whisper it into my heart, And then its music makes me start In sudden gladness. I am fain To let the echo die again! Thy image groweth out of air Until, entranced, I pause and stare Into thy dear ideal eyes— The shadow of God’s paradise. [122]

I am in love with thee, thou dear Jeanette, and keep my spirit clear For thy embrace. It cannot be That thou wilt keep aloof from me Like that immortal Florentine Whom Tasso lov’d. O I would pine Into a pale accusing dream To haunt thy pillow, and would seem So fond and sad, thy heart would fret For its unkindness, good Jeanette!

O many a long glad summer day I laughed at love, and deemed his sway The tinkle of an idle tongue, A fancy only to be sung. But thou all-beautiful! hast more Of this, the thrilling passion—love— In one soft tress of plaited gold, Than blessed Petrarch could unfold. [123] I love thee, dear Jeanette! I love Thee, O how dearly! Far above All singing is my love for thee, Thou paradise of ecstasy! Make me immortal with a kiss Of earnest pressure, and all bliss Is mine for ever, ever! Dear Jeanette, beloved, adored in fear! [124]

I SPENT a day—the landmark of a life— With one, a hero in the realms of rhyme: Ardent, yet calm—in human wisdoms rife, And burning to be something in his time. Through autumn foliage by a river side, Through glen of ivied trees and hazel dell, Each heart by its own sunshine glorified, We wandered wildly wise; till it befel, Beneath a faded elm, we came upon a well. [125]

And, sitting by the still translucent water, In pleasaunce sweet we quaffed the liquid cold; Lo! as we drank, there passed a fairer daughter Of Beauty than Fidessa. Then the old— Yet never old, immortal song of glory, Breathing of summer bower and emerald lea, And fountain bubbling coldly—Spenser’s story Thrilled all our brains to living ecstasy: Such power had maiden floating onward maidenly.

And pondered we, above that placid wave, How we were thrown upon a colder day; Yet, by the sword of Arthur! quite as brave, As wondrous willing for the haughty fray As Arthegal and Guyon. So we rose And joined our hands in fervent heat, and swore By old Renown’s endeavours, and by those Who battled well and won, to dream no more, But through a sea of fears to struggle for the shore. [126]

I think no good of him who takes his ease, As pigeon-livered in the human game As Braggadocio: on the tranquil seas All ships sail nobly; but whoe’er is tame To face the waves when fringed with windy spray, Is but a coward. Let him live, then rot! No man shall speak of him, no pilgrim lay A twist of wild-flowers on the common spot That marks his meagre dust—the poltroon is forgot.

But, good friend! we shall fight. Even he who fails In a great cause is noble. Time will show The best and worst of it; and while it hails Some worthy Song-kings of the long-ago, Perhaps our names will echo with the rest, And in no feebleness. Meantime, oh fight! In the thick hurry of the battle press’d, Clothed on with resolution, the soul’s might— Be Hector or Achilles!—God defend the right! [127]

O COOL the summer woods Of dear Gartshore, where bloom Soft clouds of white anemones Among their own perfume. And clear the little brooklet, Singing an endless lay, Winding its nameless waters Close by the white highway. And here in sweet sensation, And soul-uneasy swoon, [128] I’ve lain for many a golden Hour of a summer noon. The cushats crooned around me Their murmuring amorous song; And in a brooding drowsiness, The echoes swooned along; Till all the sweet sensations Grew into utter pain, And I was fain to wander All sadly home again. There have been brotherhoods in song, And human friendships true; There have been lovers unto death, Yes, and right many too. But never in the march of time, And ne’er in mortal knowing, From history or nobler rhyme, Hath there been such constant flowing: One from mountains far away, [129] One from glades of emerald shining, Flowing, flowing evermore For a delicate combining. If upon a summer’s day, When the air is blue and bracing, You for Merkland take your way, Sweet uneasy fancies chasing; You may see the famous grove— If not famous, then most surely Ripe for fame, which is but love— Where they mingle most demurely. Not in song and babbling play Which no poet could unravel; But in tender simple way, On a bed of golden gravel. Where I sit I see them now,— Bothlin with her endless winding From a mountain’s purple brow, Sacred contemplation finding; [130] In still nooks of shady rest, Gleaming greenly ’neath the holly: Youth, she says, is often blest With a touch of melancholy. Luggie from the orient fields Wiser is, yet hath a beauty, Which the snowy conscience yields To the softened face of duty. All she does bespeaks a grace, Yet the grace hath that of sadness We behold in many a face, Where we had expected gladness. But when Bothlin meets her there, See the change to sudden glory! Surely such another pair Never met in classic story. I could sing for half a day, And my spirit never weary Fashioning the vernal lay [131] With a linnet’s impulse cheery. But some night in leafy June, You the place yourself may see; When the light is in the moon, Like the passion that’s in me. [132]

THE evening now is still and calm, As if sad Eloïsa’s soul Had breathed a spiritual balm Throughout the softened whole. Within the azure of the sky There shineth not a single star; But in a soft serenity The Crescent cometh from afar. In darker lines the firs that shade The house of Merkland round and round, [133] Come out, and from the fragrant glade No liquid notes resound: I heard the birds this live-long day, In sweet unwrinkled blending, As if this merry month of May Should never have an ending. O could I utter thoughts that rise, O could I sing the tender Softness of the summer skies, In all their virgin splendour! O crescent Moon, like pearlëd bark To ferry souls to glory; O silent deepening of the dark O’er vale and promontory! Alas, that I should live, and be A churl in soul, while slowly God makes the solemn eve, and breathes A calm thro’ hearts unholy! [134]

SEVEN sycamores of wondrous fairness, smooth, And mealy green of trunk, and murmurous In multitudinous sun-twinkling leaves, This valley grace. Three fairer than the rest, Which in the silent worship of my heart I fondly call the brothers of Bridgend, O’er cottage floors when doors are wide for heat And often on the face of cradled child, Throw dusky shadows. And when lenient winds Blow motion, the cool shadows flicker, and play Upon the floors, and glimpse the countenance [135] Of the sweet baby, till the mother laughs, And bending downward, kisses. But of all The trees that ever tufted hill or vale, That ever took the breeze or sheltered nest, Or rung with flowing melody of birds, The strangest and the dearest, best and first, Waves audibly upon a windy hill Above the Luggie. In the front of Spring, When the first crocus gleams among the grass, One half shines out full-leaved, the other bare: And when the Autumn violet hath lost Its fragrance, and the meadow-hay is mown, One half shines out full-leaved, the other bare. There are two trees, whose marriageable boughs Twine, each with each, and throw a common shade, A chestnut and an elm. The former opes Its oily buds whene’er the teeming south Breathes life and warm intenerating balm, But fades in early Autumn; while supreme [136] In vigorous development, the elm Full-foliaged glimmers till October’s end. At the twin roots and facing the rich west A summer seat is rustically carved, A sylvan shelter from the mid-day sun: But nor in mid-day, nor when decent eve Gather her purples have I rested there; But when thro’ crisp and fleecy clouds the moon O’er the soft orient sheds a milder dawn, Then tripping up the dewy lea, with step Light as an antelope, a maiden came, And all her radiance in my bosom laid; And on this seat, while high among the leaves Rain murmured, and the glory of the moon Was dimmed, I whispered all my passion-tale. Ah me, ah me! her silken hair down-slid, Her smooth comb dropt among the grass, and both Stooped searching, and her burning cheek met mine: And starting suddenly upward, with her face [137] Rosed to the beating temples, meek she gazed, Half sad, and the blue languish of her eyes Drooped tearful. And in madness and delight, I with my left arm zoned her little waist, And with my right hand smoothed the silken hair From her fair brow, snow-cold; and, by the doves That bill and coo in Venus’ pearly car! There was a touch of lips. Then creeping close Into my bosom like a little thing That was confused, she cradled pantingly. Thus, while the rain was murmuring overhead, And the out-passioned moon thro’ vaporous gloom Dipt queenly, whispered I my perilous tale. Ah me, ah me! a tender answer came; For with her softling finger-tips she touched My hand, warm laid upon her heart, and pressed A meek approval with averted face. O poet-maker, darling love, sweet love, Awakener of manhood, and the life [138] Of life. But let me not like talking fool Prate all thy virgin whiteness, all thy sweet Deliciousness, for thou art living yet! And as the rose that opens to the sun Its downy leaves, scents sweetest at the core, So all thy loveliness is but the robe That clothes a maiden chastity of soul.

O hasten, hasten down your azure road, And darken all the golden zones of heaven, Bright Sun, for I am weary for my love. [139]

AH well-a-day, for human plans, And Fancy’s bright creations, With all the purple-wingéd brood Of young imaginations! I’ve tried, this weary winter’s day, All poignant cares to banish, By quaffing goblets, rosy-brimm’d, Of dear poetic Rhenish.

Not all the sweets of Castaly— That river Heliconian, [140] Adorn’d with swans of queenly snow, Of ancient brood Strymonian; Not all the maiden Muses nine, With tresses loosely flowing, Could magnetise a single line, Or set my quill a-going;

Until I thought of thee, dear friend— Best loved, though long unheeded; Then forth the virgin pages came, And quick my fingers speeded. This very hour I’ll make amends, This lonely hour quiescent, When all the stars are in the blue, ’Mid lustre irridescent.

And, from the slopes I know right well, All shagg’d with bending thistle, The homeless wind comes with a swell, [141] And enters with a whistle; Till brightlier glows the cosy fire, And cheerier my bosom, In thinking on the shivering woods, And vales without a blossom.

You know the Luggie, natal stream!— On earth to us none dearer— Where Lady Luna, mirror’d, burns, With all her handmaids near her. The time may come when haughty Fame With laurel shall console us; Then we shall halo it with song Till it outflow Pactolus!

The woods, the vales, the hawthorn dales, The hoary hamlet Caurnie Shall be of goodlier report Than genius-hallowed Ferney. [142] And though I speak like boaster vain, I speak not without thinking; Already on thy noble brow I see a chaplet twinkling!

Heaven knows! amid the march of Time I am a simple dreamer; Can see more in the patient moon— Yon radiant crescent-gleamer— Than all the banner’d pomp of war, Or progress politician; Than all the mockeries of rank, And haughtiness patrician.

No golden key, however bright, Can pass the fragrant portal Of Fame’s grand temple-dome, or make A simpleton immortal. Then what is wealth to our desire? [143] (A burning tear-drop pays us) A rushlight to the morning star, To Homer but a Crœsus.

Then, Willie, though a careless dog, In brotherhood excuse me, Nor with neglect, and haughty look, Most wantonly abuse me. I’ve suffer’d much and suffer’d long, Dear heart! since last we ponder’d On gentle love, within that hall Where ancient ivies wander’d.

Nor think my love one jot the less— Than love I sought in passion— Because I thus have treated thee In unpoetic fashion. Let this suffice for evermore: I plead a self-conviction, [144] And thy frank spirit never shall Increase my sad affliction.

Then sure I’ll see thee yet again, Before another morrow Steals up the east—shall see thee, friend! In a delightful sorrow. With silent gratitude, I speak A blessing on our meeting, And may the light of friendship touch Our spirits at the greeting! [145]

BEHOLD! a waking vision crowns my soul With beatific radiance, and the light Of shining hope;—a golden-memoried dream That clings unto my youth, as clung the strange Leonine phantom to that mystic man, Lean Paracelsus. It has grown with me Like destiny, or that which seems to be My destiny, ambition: and its glow Inflames my fancy, as if some clear star Had burst in silvery light within my brain. From the smooth hyaline of that far sea [146] The pictured Adriatic rises, fair As dream, a kingly-built and tower’d town; Column and arch and architrave instinct With delicatest beauty; overwrought With tracery of interlacèd leaves For ever blooming on white marble, hush’d In everlasting summer, windless, cold: The city of the Doges!

From the calm Transparent waters float some thrilling sounds Of Amphionic music, and the words Are Tasso’s, where he passions for his love, That lady Florentine so lily-smooth, Clothed on with haughtiness!

At the black stair Of palace rising shadowy from the wave, Two singing gondolieri wait a freight [147] Of loveliness. A tremulous woman, robed In dazzling satin, and whose dimpled arms, And milky heaving breasts of living snow Shine through their veil diaphanous, floats down From the wide portal; and the ivory prow Of the soft-cushion’d gondola (as she Steps lightly from the marble to her place) Dips, rises, dips again; then through the blue Swift glides into the sunset.

Oh, the glow Of that rich sunset dims whate’er I see In this my own dear valley! O’er the hills— Those craggy Euganean hills, whose peaks Wedge the clear crystalline—a blazonry Of clouds pavilion’d, folded, interwound Inextricably, load the breezeless west With awe and glory. The effulgence gleams Upon a vision’d Belmont, home of her Who loved as Shakespeare’s women do; and gleams [148] Upon those walls wherein Othello’s spear Stabb’d clinging innocence; where that poor wife, The love-Cassandra Belvidera, gave Her soul in martyrdom to love and woe.

And shall I never that far town behold, Crested with sparkling columns, fiery towers, Praxitelean masonry?—behold Venice, the mart of nations, ere I die? By Heaven! her common merchants princes were Unto the continents; her traffickers The honourable of the earth! She stood A crownèd city, and the fawning sea Licked her white feet; and the eternal sun Kissed with departing beam her brow of snow!

Woe to this Venice, with her crown of pride! The Lady of the kingdoms, the perfection Of beauty, and the joy of the whole earth! [149] Through her pavilions shall the crannying winds Whistle, and all her borders in the sea Crumble their Parian wonder. Woe to her, Whose glorious beauty is a fading flower! Her sober-suited nightingales, with notes Of smooth liquidity and softened stops, Solace the brakes; and ’mid her ancient streets Tawny, the gleaming and harmonious sea Makes silvery melody of bygone days. O white Enchantment! Ocean-spouse of old! When thy high battlements and bulging domes, By sunset purpled, trembled in the wave! Now o’er thy towers the Lord hath spread his hand, And as a cottage shalt thou be removed; Like Nineveh, or cloudy Babylon! [150]

I HAVE wandered far to-day, In a pleased unquiet way; Over hill and songful hollow, Vernal byeways, fresh and fair, Did I simple fancies follow; Till upon a hill-side bare, Suddenly I chanced to see A little white anemone.

Beneath a clump of furze it grew; And never mortal eye did view [151] Its rathe and slender beauty, till I saw it in no mocking mood; For with its sweetness did it fill To me the ample solitude. A fond remembrance made me see Strange light in the anemone.

One April day when I was seven, Beneath the clear and deepening heaven, My father, God preserve him! went With me a Scottish mile and more; And in a playful merriment He deck’d my bonnet o’er and o’er— To fling a sunshine on his ease— With tenderest anemones.

Now, gentle reader, as I live, This snowy little bloom did give My being most endearing throes. [152] I saw my father in his prime; But youth it comes, and youth it goes, And he has spent his blithest time: Yet dearer grown thro’ all to me, And dearer the anemone.

So with the spirit of a sage I pluck’d it from its hermitage, And placed it ’tween the sacred leaves Of Agnes’ Eve at that rare part Where she her fragrant robe unweaves, And with a gently beating heart, In troubled bliss and balmy woe, Lies down to dream of Porphyro.

Let others sing of that and this, In war and science find their bliss; Vainly they seek and will not find The subtle lore that nature brings [153] Unto the reverential mind, The pathos worn by common things, By every flower that lights the lea, And by the pale anemone. [154]

IN fairy glen of Woodilee, One sunny summer morning, I plucked a little birchen tree, The spongy moss adorning; And bearing it delighted home, I planted it in garden loam, Where, perfecting all duty, It flowered in tassel’d beauty.

When delicate April in each dell Was silently completing [155] Her ministry in bud and bell, To grace the summer’s meeting; My birchen tree of glossy rind Determined not to be behind; So with a subtle power The buds began to flower.

And I could watch from out my house The twigs with leaflets thicken; From glossy rind to twining boughs The milky sap ’gan quicken. And when the fragrant form was green No fairer tree was to be seen, All Gartshore woods adorning, Where doves are always mourning.

But never dove with liquid wing, Or neck of changeful gleaming, Came near my garden tree to sing [156] Or croodle out its meaning. But this sweet day, an hour ago, A yellowhammer clear and low, In love and tender pity Thrilled out his dainty ditty.

And I was pleased, as you may think, And blessed the little singer: ‘O fly for your mate to Luggie brink, Dear little bird! and bring her; And build your nest among the boughs, A sweet and cosy little house Where ye may well content ye, Since true love is so plenty.

And when she sits upon her nest, Here are cool shades to shroud her.’ At this the singer sang his best, O louder yet, and louder; [157] Until I shouted in my glee, His song had so enchanted me. No nightingale could pant on In joy so wise and wanton.

But at my careless noise he flew, And if he chance to bring her A happy bride the summer thro’ ’Mong birchen boughs to linger, I’ll sing to you in numbers high A summer song that shall not die, But keep in memory clearly The bird I love so dearly. [158]

LAST night a vision was dispelled, Which I can never dream again; A wonder from the earth has gone, A passion from my brain. I saw upon a budding ash A cuckoo, and she blithely sung To all the valleys round about, While on a branch she swung. Cuckoo, cuckoo! I looked around, And like a dream fulfilled, [159] A slender bird of modest brown, My sight with wonder thrilled. I looked again and yet again; My eyes, thought I, do sure deceive me, But when belief made doubting vain, Alas, the sight did grieve me. For twice to-day I heard the cry, The hollow cry of melting love; And twice a tear bedimmed my eye— I saw the singer in the grove, I saw him pipe his eager tone, Like any other common bird, And, as I live, the sovereign cry Was not the one I always heard.

O why within that lusty wood Did I the fairy sight behold? O why within that solitude Was I thus blindly overbold? [160] My heart, forgive me! for indeed I cannot speak my thrilling pain: The wonder vanished from the earth, The passion from my brain. [161]

A Fragment.

O GLORIOUS Fame! next grandest word to God, Father of all things beautiful and grand, Of all the thoughts ideal and sublime That grace the annals of our literature. Thou stirrer of the heart to noble deeds! Thou powerful antidote to cringing fear Of battle, rolling ’mid the billowy smoke That wreaths its curls blue over flood and field! In the cold, creaking garret, or beside The entrance to a theatre, or where [162] Luxury pillows soft the somnolent head, Or where the dew-bent daisy droops to kiss The dark grey eggs of lark, companion sweet! There thou dost lift their souls above this world, And teachest them in language fair and wild, To ope their hearts in strains of poesy. Ah, noble Fame! how deeply I adore Thy altar, smelling sweet with fond applause! Sages may shun, philosophers may scorn; But, ah! to a young heart, how glorious The thought that he, by well-earned merit, shall Be spoken of, yea praised, ’neath the roof-tree Of peasant, or beneath the monarch’s dome! That learned men will wonder, and in joy Will lift their hands and shake astonished heads; That by the fireside, while the flick’ring lamp Doth send its shadow-forming light athwart. The genius young shall read, and read, and read Until the warning bell strike one short hour, [163] Then fling it past, and, pillowed on his couch, Dream of the happy-gifted one that wrote it; That maidens, high in rank and fair in form, Shall speak to one another of that man Who, bathing in the pure Castalian fount, Arose, and from his form with pearlets clad Shook off the diamonds in bright profusion, That, while the clouds do tell their pattering beads, And through the forest roars the wailing wind Sporting with the brown leaves that wheel aloft, A joyous family, seated by a fire That roars in laughter at the storm without, Talked of the poet— [164]

STOP! taste the balmy essence of this flower, That fondly twines about the dark-green fir; The air is sweet, and, like a mild-eyed saint, It liveth doing good. The balmy gale Far wafts its odours to the lowly door Of yon small cot thatched with the dying heath, And the old dame doth bless the laden wind. I do not think that e’er a tender eye Looked on thee but with love,—that e’er a tongue Spoke of thee but with blessings and with praise. [165] Thy lean red shanks cling round the dusty trunk, And send their white shoots through the brown rough bark, So true, so fond and frail-like that when one Looks on thee, his mind’s eye sees round God’s throne White spirits breathing hymns and fed with love. Ye sweet, sweet flowers! ye must have mutual love, For when one stalk, with its own beauty, droops, With oily leaves and breathing blossoms heavy, The others haste their sister to upraise, And, winding round it with affection’s grasp, Lift it from off the earth’s dark dreaded breast. How many nosegays have I often culled Of thee, fair guiltless thief, for even thy name Tells how thou sucklest nature’s honeyed sweets, And leav’st her less wherewith to bless the rest. Thou art not very beauteous; many flowers, With high-fringed crests and gaudy-spotted leaves, [166] Outstrip thy homely dress; but tell me one That blesseth ether with more fragrant smell? ’Tis ever thus. Furred robes and shining silks Oft hide a poppy’s smell—a dastard mind; And homely garments oft adorn a breast That heaves at pity’s tale and tale of wrong, And, known by none, yet is a friend to all. [167]

WHEN the place was green with the shaky grass, And the windy trees were high; When the leaflets told each other tales, And the stars were in the sky; When the silent crows hid their ebon beaks Beneath their ruffled wing— Then the fairies watered the glancing spot Where the lilies used to spring!

When the sun is high in the summer sky, And the lake is deep with clouds; [168] When gadflies bite the prancing kine, And light the lark enshrouds— Then the butterfly, like a feather dropped From the tip of an angel’s wing, Floats wavering on to the glancing spot Where the lilies used to spring!

When the wheat is shorn and the burns run brown, And the moon shines clear at night; When wains are heaped with rustling corn, And the swallows take their flight; When the trees begin to cast their leaves, And the birds, new-feathered, sing— Then comes the bee to the glancing spot Where the lilies used to spring!

When the sky is grey and the trees are bare, And the grass is long and brown, And black moss clothes the soft damp thatch, [169] And the rain comes weary down, And countless droplets on the pond Their widening orbits ring— Then bleak and cold is the silent spot Where the lilies used to spring! [170]

FLOWERS upon the summer lea, Daisies, kingcups, pale primroses— These are sung from sea to sea, As many a darling rhyme discloses. Tangled wood and hawthorn dale In many a songful snatch prevail; But never yet, as well I mind, In all their verses can I find A simple tune, with quiet flow, To match the falling of the snow. [171]

O weary passed each winter day, And windily howled each winter night; O miry grew each village way, And mists enfolded every height; And ever on the window pane A froward gust blew down with rain, And day by day in tawny brown The Luggie stream came heaving down:— I could have fallen asleep and dreamed Until again spring sunshine gleamed.

And what! said I, is this the mode That Winter kings it now-a-days? The Robin keeps its own abode, And pipes his independent lays. I’ve seen the day on Merkland hill, That snow has fallen with a will, Even in November! Now, alas; The whole year round we see the grass:— Ah, winter now may come and go Without a single fall of snow. [172]

It was the latest day but one Of winter, as I questioned thus; And sooth! an angry mood was on, As at a thing most scandalous;— When lo! some hailstones on the pane With sudden tinkle rang amain, Till in an ecstasy of joy I clapp’d and shouted like a boy— Oh, rain may come and rain may go, But what can match the falling snow!

It draped the naked sycamore On Foordcroft hill, above the well; The elms of Rosebank o’er and o’er Were silvered richly as it fell. The distant Campsie peaks were lost, [173] And farthest Criftin with his host Of gloomy pine-trees disappeared, Nor even a lonely ridge upreared.— Oh, rain may come and rain may go, But what can match the falling snow!

Afar upon the Solsgirth moor, Each heather sprig of withered brown Is fringed with thread of silver pure As slow the soft flakes waver down; And on Glenconner’s lonely path, And Gartshore’s still and open strath, It falleth, quiet as the birth Of morning o’er the quickening earth.— Oh, rain may come and rain may go, But what can match the falling snow!

And all around our Merkland home Is laid a sheet of virgin lawn; [174] On fairer, softer, ne’er did roam The nimble Oread or Faun. There is a wonder in the air, A living beauty everywhere; As if the whole had ne’er been planned, But touched by Merlin’s famous wand, Suddenly woke beneath his hand To potent bliss in fairy show— A mighty ravishment of snow! [175]

SWEET Muse and well-beloved, with my decline Declining, like a rose crushed unawares, Having too early knowledge of decay, Too subtle pleasure to behold the tree Shed its thin foliage on the sluggish stream,— What a sweet subject for thy silver sounds!

O for a quill pluck’d from the soaring wing Of an archangel, dipped in holy dew, To catch thy latest looks, thou loveliest October, o’er the many-coloured woods! [176] October! vastlier disconsolate Than Saturn guiding melancholy spheres, Through ante-mundane silence and ripe death. Ere the last stack is housed, and woods are bare, And the vermilion fruitage of the brier Is soaked in mist, or shrivelled up with frost; Ere warm Spring nests are coldly to be seen Tenantless, but for rain and the cold snow, While yet there is a loveliness abroad,— The frail and indescribable loveliness Of a fair form Life with reluctance leaves, Being there only powerful,—while the earth Wears sackcloth in her great prophetic grief:—

Then the reflective melancholy soul,— Aimlessly wandering with slow falling foot The heath’ry solitude, in hope to assuage The cunning humour of his malady,— Loses his painful bitterness, and feels [177] His own specific sorrows one by one Taken up in the huge dolour of all things.

O the sweet melancholy of the time When gently, ere the heart appeals, the year Shines in the fatal beauty of decay! When the sun sinks enlarged on Carronben, Nakedly visible without a cloud, And faintly from the faint eternal blue (That dim, sweet harebell-colour) comes the star Which evening wears;—when Luggie flows in mist, And in the cottage windows one by one, With sudden twinkle household lamps are lit, What noiseless falling of the faded leaf!

Sweet on a blossoming summer’s afternoon, When Fancy plays the wizard in the brain, Idly to saunter thro’ a lusty wood! But sweeter far—by how much sweeter, God [178] Alone hath knowledge—in a pensive mood, Outstretched on green moss-velvet floss’d with thyme, To watch the fall o’ the leaf before the moon Shines out in sweet completion circular. For when the sunset hath withdrawn its gold And glimmering, like the surcease Of rich, low melody, erst inaudible streams Find voices in their still unwearied flow; And winds that have been much above the moors And mountains, have a deadly feel of cold, Forespeaking clear blue dawns and frosty chill. [179]

AH! frail memorial of a thousand years! Thou seem’st a stranger in a foreign land: No pitying hand thy fragments, fall’n, uprears, But useless, graceless, thou art left to stand. And yet, across this foggy, rain-slash’d wall, The savage tatoo’d Caledonians slew, With gory club, the high-nosed Romans, who With joy retreated at Antonius’ call. That stone which now I touch has handled been By brawny Romans, who, in Latin talked [180] Of their fantastic foes, as, oft-times seen, With sacred tramp of liberty they stalked. And have they e’er been slaves? that dyke shall tell: The Romans, Saxons, Southrons, Swedes, they’ve braved, And, like proud eagles, scorned to be enslaved; As freemen now they stand—as freemen then they fell. On that side scorn the paths of slavery; Here—kiss the hallowed dust of Liberty! [181] [182]

[183]

EZEKIEL, thus from the Lord God: Behold, Mount Seir, I am against thee! Desolate, Most desolate thy cloudy and dark fate. Between the lips of talkers bad and bold, Thy towns forsaken, and thy rivers rolled Thro’ silent wastes, are taken up, and great The joy at thy high glories ruinate. While all the earth is wanton, thou art cold, For thy most cruel lifting of the spear ’Gainst Israel in her time of consternation. Slain men shall fill thy mountains, O mount Seir! Sith thou hast blood pursued, fell tribulation Shall curse thy blessings, mock’d and undeplored:— As I live, thou shalt know I am the Lord! [184]

SWEET Mavis! at this cool delicious hour Of gloaming, with a pensive quietness Hushes the odorous air,—with what a power Of impulse unsubdued, thou dost express Thyself a spirit! While the silver dew Holy as manna on the meadow falls, Thy song’s impassioned clarity, trembling through This omnipresent stillness, disenthrals The soul to adoration. First I heard A low thick lubric gurgle, soft as love, Yet sad as memory, thro’ the silence poured Like starlight. But the mood intenser grows, Precipitate rapture quickens, move on move Lucidly linked together, till the close. [185]

O MYSTERY of love and human grief, And hope, half-prophet ever prone to tears! My heart is lonely as a withered leaf Upon the winter tree. The passing years Are barren to me of all happiness, And, like a hoary anchorite, I feed Upon my past, and, fetisch-like, it dress With glory and clear jewels not its own. O Love, and Childhood! and those happy times When ignorance was patron to my need, When every hour was like a linnet flown In song, and beautiful in simple rhymes. Would that my feelings knew the quiet flow Of thy clear waters, Luggie! singing as they go! [186]

COME, light-foot Lady! from thy vaporous hall, And, with a silver-swim into the air, Shine down the starry cressets one and all From Pleiades to golden Jupiter! I see a growing tip of silver peep Above the full-fed cloud, and lo! with motion Of queenly stateliness, and smooth as sleep, She glides into the blue for my devotion. O sovran Beauty! standing here alone Under the insufferable infinite, I worship with dazed eyes and feeble moan Thy lucid persecution of delight. Come, cloudy dimness! Dip, fair dream, again! O God! I cannot gaze, for utter pain. [187]

WITH what a calm serenity she smooths Her way thro’ cloudless jasper sown with stars! Chaster than virtue, sweeter than sweet truths Of maidenhood, in Spenser’s knightly wars. For what is all Belphœbe’s golden hair, The chastity of Britomart, the love Of Florimel so faithful and so fair, To thee, thou Wonder! And yet far above Thy inoffensive beauty must I hold Dear Una, sighing for the Red-cross Knight Thro’ all her losses, crosses manifold. And when the lordly lion fell in fight, Who, who can paragon her tearful woe? Not thou, O Moon! didst ever passion so. [188]

LONG yearnings had my soul to gaze upon Fair Italy with atmosphere of fire; On tawny Spain; on th’ immemorial land Where Time has dallied with the Parthenon In beautiful affection and desire. But when last even, effluently bland, I saw sweet Luggie wind her amber waters Thro’ lawns of dew and glens of glimmering green, And saw the comeliness of Scotland’s daughters, Their speaking eyes and modest mountain mien,— I blest the Godhead over all presiding, Who placed me here, removed from human strife, Where Luggie, in her clear unwearied gliding, Is but the image of my inner life. [189]

THE Avon is a famous rivulet, The mountain Duddon and the “bonnie Doon” Flow ever-shining in the sun of song, While plaintive Yarrow moaneth evermore. But there is one which I must halo yet With verse, as with a gleam of morning glory; Must set its woodland murmurings to tune, As through summer groves it steals along; Must gather inspiration from its love Of visible beauty and traditions hoary, And spiritual presences sublime. Dear Luggie! thou are mine by right of birth, And daily brotherhood and poet’s rhyme. O could I make thee famous o’er the earth! [190]

PACTOLUS singeth over golden sand; Scamander, old and blood-empurpled river, Rolls yet her stream divine; and Castaly Flows lucid in the light of ancient song; Whilst thou, sweet Luggie! fairest of this land, And fair as any of that famous throng, In pastoral, still loveliness, must be Bald as a marshy brooklet nameless ever! Nay, by the spirit of beauty and dear pleasure, Sure I shall sing thee as my first delight, Nurse of my soul, companion of my leisure! And if in aftertime thy waters roll More worthily, more spiritually bright, It will be sunshine to my perfect soul. [191]

LISTEN, O spirit of that ancient bard! Thou weird Ezekiel of an age of lies And human fantasy! If ’neath the skies One being liveth, worthy to be heard, Whisper the awful sesame that unstarr’d To thee the riddle of those mysteries, Dumb evermore to gazing of all eyes Mortal and uninspired! O thou that warr’d With man and custom, I do think of thee As something of a glory, something grand Beyond what ever satisfied this land With earnest of a strange divinity, Penn’d in thy passionately-breathing moods, Prophetic peopler of old solitudes! [192]

A LIME-TREE broad of bough and rough of trunk Deepens a shadow, as the evening cool, Over the Luggie gathering in deep pool Contemplative, its waters summer-shrunk; The Lammas floods have sucked away the mould About its roots, and now in bare sunshine Like knot of snakes they twine and intertwine Fantastic implication, fold in fold. Secure in covert, ’neath the fringing fern Lurks the bright-speckled trout, untroubled, save When boyhood with a glorious unconcern Eagerly plunges in the sleeping wave. Here the much-musing poet might recapture The inspiration flown, the vagrant rapture. [193]

O DEEP unlovely brooklet, moaning slow Thro’ moorish fen in utter loneliness! The partridge cowers beside thy loamy flow In pulseful tremor, when with sudden press The huntsman flusters thro’ the rustled heather. In March thy sallow-buds from vermeil shells Break, satin-tinted, downy as the feather Of moss-chat that among the purplish bells Breasts into fresh new life her three unborn. The plover hovers o’er thee, uttering clear And mournful—strange, his human cry forlorn: While wearily, alone, and void of cheer Thou glid’st thy nameless waters from the fen, To sleep unsunned in an untrampled glen. [194]

A SACRED land, to common men unknown, A land of bowery glades and greenwoods hoary, Still waters where white stars reflected shone, And ancient castles in their ivied glory. Fair knights caparison’d in golden mail, And maidens whose enchantment was their beauty, Met but to whisper each the passion-tale, For love was all their pleasure and their duty. Here cedar bark, as with a moving will, Floated thro’ liquid silver, all untended; Here wrong and baseness ever came to ill, And virtue with delight was sweetly blended. This land, dear Spenser! was thy fair creation, Made thro’ fine glamour of imagination. [195]

O PRECIOUS Morphia! I sanctify The soothing power that in a painless swoon Laps my weak limbs, giving me strength to lie, Till sacred dawn increases unto noon: Then when, from highest meridional height, The sun devolves, and cooling breezes wake, It is a comfort and divine delight The weary bed exhausted to forsake, And bathe my temples in the blessed air. But when day wanes, and the wind-moaning night Deepens to darkness, then thy virtue rare, O dream-creative liquid! brings delight, Thy silver drops, diffusive, kindly steep The senses in the golden juice of sleep. [196]

O FOR the days of old Mythology, When dripping Naiads taught their streams to glide! When, ’mid the greenery, one would oft-times spy An Oread tripping with her face aside. The dismal realms of Dis by Virgil sung, Whose shade led Dante, in his virtue bold, All the sad grief and agony among, O’er Acheron, that mournful river old, Ev’n to the Stygian tide of purple gloom! Pan in the forest making melody! And far away where hoariest billows boom, Old Neptune’s steeds with snorting nostrils high! These were the ancient days of sunny song; Their memory yet how dear to the poetic throng. [197]

O IF we never knew the genial hour When Happiness sits by us like a god Dispensing treasures, we would never know The barren sadness of the common day, The weariness, and discontentment sour At human life—its ordinary load Of hopes deferred, and presences that flow Smilingly past us, syrens in the dream Of young imagination, fancy-fed. O I have seen such beauties with the gleam Of fairy sunshine on them, and I long Upon their bosoms this my life away To dally, like the lover in a song, And be a luting swain, Arcadian bred! [198]

BUT yestermorn the February snow Lay printless as the heaven upon this field, And, with a rapture in my bosom born, In sudden awe and reverence I kneeled Alone beneath the glory of the sky And omnipresent deity. To-day The spirit of the beautiful no more Over the wondering earth, in earnest glow Touches to beauty all the landscape grey,— Bringing a vision from her palace high To this sublunar planet. Now, forlorn As Ariadne on Cretan shore For many bitter-cold and weary days She knoweth not her old immortal ways. [199]

ONE Candlemas, a gentle day of Spring, I was abroad betimes while the red sun Rose large and stately with a purpled ring Of mist about him, and a mantle dun. Thro’ naked boughs he ominously glared, Till, soul-constrained, in sudden awe I stood, And with a Persian’s adoration stared. When lo! from a round beech-tree in the wood, The only tree to which the brown leaves clung, A mavis warbled forth his mellow lay; And ever as his ditty clear he sung The passion swelled his breast of downy grey. Dear bird! since then thy melody I know The boldest in intent, the fullest in its flow. [200]

O COLD blue night, and deep the cloudless sky Gleams, sown with lucid keen and trembling stars;— A ravishment of glory shines on high, And the rapt soul yearns upward. Fiery Mars Shines with a baleful redness in the west; While mail’d Orion, frozenly severe, Stands like an armed skeleton opprest With centuries of sentinelship. Thro’ clear Smooth ether the keen-silvered Plough upheaves Its seven diamonds; and far away Poor Cassiopeia for her daughter grieves— Andromeda cold-touch’d by windy spray, While faintly watching with tear-misted eyne, Perseus flying shoreward o’er the gleaming brine. [201]

Below lies one whose name was traced in sand. He died, not knowing what it was to live: Died, while the first sweet consciousness of manhood And maiden thought electrified his soul, Faint beatings in the calyx of the rose. Bewildered reader! pass without a sigh, In a proud sorrow! There is life with God, In other kingdom of a sweeter air; In Eden every flower is blown: Amen.

DAVID GRAY. September 27, 1861. [202]

among the rocks he went, and still looked up to sun and cloud and listened to the wind.

	page
The Luggie,	1
In the Shadows,	63
Miscellaneous Poems.
A Winter Ramble,	99
The Home-Comer,	104
My Brown Little Brother of Three,	108
The “Auld Aisle,”	111
To Jeanette,	120
The Poet and His Friend,	124
The Two Streams,	127
Evening,	132
The Love-Tryst,	134
An Epistle to a Friend,	139
A Vision of Venice,	145
The Anemone,	150
The Yellowhammer,	154
The Cuckoo,	158[xii]
Fame,	161
Honeysuckle,	164
Where the Lilies Used to Spring,	167
Snow,	170
October,	175
The Roman Dyke,	179
Sonnets.
Ezekiel,	183
The Mavis,	184
Despondency,	185
The Moon, I., II.,	186
The Luggie, I., II., III.,	188
Thomas the Rhymer,	191
The Lime-Tree,	192
The Brooklet,	193
Maidenhood,	194
Sleep,	195
The Days of Old Mythology,	196
Discontentment,	197
Snow,	198
The Thrush,	199
Stars,	200
My Epitaph,	201
Gray’s Monument,	203[1]

The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Poetical Works of David Gray

THEPOETICAL WORKSOFDAVID GRAY

INTRODUCTORY NOTE.

The Luggie.

In the Shadows.

Induction.

I.

II.

III.

IV.

V.

VI.

VII.

VIII.

IX.

X.

XI.

XII.

XIII.

XIV.

XV.

XVI.

XVII.

XVIII.

XIX.

XX.

XXI.

XXII.

XXIII.

XXIV.

XXV.

XXVI.

XXVII.

XXVIII.

XXIX.

XXX.

Miscellaneous Poems.

A Winter Ramble.

The Home-Comer.

My Brown Little Brother of Three.

The “Auld Aisle”—a Burying-Ground.

To Jeanette.

The Poet and his Friend.

The Two Streams.

Evening.

The Love-Tryst.

An Epistle to a Friend.

A Vision of Venice.

The Anemone.

The Yellowhammer.

The Cuckoo.

Fame.

Honeysuckle.

Where the Lilies used to Spring.

Snow.

October.

The Roman Dyke.

Miscellaneous Sonnets.

Ezekiel.

The Mavis.

Despondency.

The Moon.

I.

II.

The Luggie.

I.

II.

III.

Thomas the Rhymer.

The Lime-Tree.

The Brooklet.

Maidenhood.

Sleep.

The Days of Old Mythology.

Discontentment.

Snow.

The Thrush.

Stars.

My Epitaph.

Gray’s Monument.

THE
POETICAL WORKS
OF
DAVID GRAY