Volume 70 — DAY-DREAMS OF AN EXILE.

LONGINGS.

I.

TO ——.

Come, love, and seat you here awhile,

Cheer me with your happy smile;

Fast the days of life slip by,

Though each may now seem slow,

Comes swift and irresistibly

The last one, and we go.

This I know, and do but crave

(If I leave a word or two)

After I am in my grave,

They may speak of me to you.

Far away from English things,

Here my spirit folds her wings;

Content if all she looks upon,

Even if neither rare nor strange

Speak of pleasures she has known,

Or hopes that cannot change.

Ever, as I gaze around

Our little chamber’s hallowed ground,

Each familiar sight I see

Speaks aloud of Home to me,

Here, and there beyond the Sea,

And the fair Home that is to be.

Familiar as their faces seem

Do they not minister a dream

Of pasture green, and cool hill-side,

Waving wood and moorland wide,

Distant meadows white with flocks,

Streams that shine among their rocks,

Stormy shadow broadly borne

O’er yellow fields of bending corn,

And sheeny sparklings of the sea

Heaving and murmuring delightedly.

In the long dawn of vernal day

How often have I burst away,—

Fared gaily through the sleeping Town

And wandered to the woods alone.

The Bee hummed in the Eglantine,

And the breeze swayed the curls of the young Woodbine;

The May scented the hedges along,

The Lark was above like a star of song;

Through the hay-hung lanes we go

Over the style, across the meadow,

Where the swift streams whispering flow,

Where the black pools sleep in shadow.

Where the angler seeks his sport,

That Verdurer of Nature’s Court,

Who never lets his occupation

Balk him of happy contemplation.

Look down—the long straight Pike has past,

Like Death’s keen arrow, flying fast,

Where Dace and Minnows, silver-coated fools,

Are playing on the surface of the Pools.

Look up—the thin-winged Dragon-fly

Is insolently gleaming by;

Look up—the Oak-tree stirs, and in it

Floods of sweet song betray the linnet;

Over all the dark blue sky

Overhangs us smilingly,

Flecked with many fleecy wreaths

As the Watery West wind breathes.

Look round—the Primrose peeps at you

From a nest of crumpled leaves;

The Periwinkle, bathed in dew,

Is like a maiden’s eye of blue

Turned to the Moon from under alien eaves.

The sword-grass, and the mimic rye,

The clover, and the lucerne sweet,

And the chamomiles, that die,

Spent in fragrance at your feet;

Every herb, wind-stirred, or shaking

With some insect’s tiny weight,

(Such as all around are making

Myriad noises delicate)

Swells the universal tone

That Summer sings—a music of her own.

False season! she has brought the shower!

Away to yonder trellised bower

Of clematis and vine;

The skies may weep ten times an hour,

As oft they’ll smile and shine.

Here sit secure; or, sweeter still,

Seek the hospitable mill,

Where the clattering cog-wheels ply,

And the clouds of white dust fly,

There, leaning at the casement, look

On the fresh and fragrant scene:

The drops flash in the eddying brook,

The grass puts on a tender green;

The soft rain whispers to the leaves—

Ceases, the shower is done;

The big drops hang upon the eaves,

And sparkle in the sun.

The images that Memory yields

Are crowding on my mind

Of ruined Abbeys, lone in fields

With purple hills behind.

Of Churchyards, with their tombs and yews,

Seen in a night of June,

What time the fertilising dews

Are falling in the Moon.

The little Church, five hundred years

Has seen the spring of hopes and fears

To all the lowly villagers;

Who with ancestral tombs around

Meet weekly on the holy ground.

They seat them orderly within,

Purging their hearts from taint of sin;

They see the tables of the Law,

The Altar that their fathers saw,

The war-worn banners, full of rents,

The helmets with their stains and dents

That hang above the monuments;

The squire’s great pew, the lackeys tall,

A stately, well-fed band,

Who mock the manners of the Hall,

Vicariously grand.

They hear the minister’s calm voice,

The tinklings of a grazing flock,

The whispering trees, the runnel’s noise,

The pulses of the ancient clock;

The which, like well according parts

Sound harmony to happy hearts.

And even when the misery

Of loved ones having ceased to be

Had brought the black and hushed procession

To see the friend they could not save

Take imperturbable possession

Of his last tenement—the grave—

And when the Sun was dim and red

That shone above that earthy bed,

Throwing a watery noon and brief

On autumn’s worn and wind-beat leaf;

And, for the fog that wrapped the land,

The trees were like a spectral band;

Even then the lichen-covered tower,

The yew-trees and the monuments,

Consoled them, howsoe’er the hour

Heaped up their withering discontents;

Save that nor Hope nor Memory,

Nor thought of “sure and certain trust,”

Could quell the sob of Agony,

As fell those handfuls audibly,

Gross Earth, dead Ashes, kindred dust.

Ah come to me! the dream is flown,

Thank God, I am not all alone;

Thank God, no burthen on me lies,

More than the homeless heart can bear;

For sadness, and tear-darkened eyes,

And visions vague, and Memories,

Are sweeter than oblivious Despair.

II.

Where Summer is, there ’tis fresh and fair,

For forest and field are gay,

When the Sun looks down on tower and town

That smile beneath his ray.

Upon the hills the morning breeze

Still whispers in the yellow broom;

The poplar throws a quivering shade,

The oak-tree sheds a broader gloom;

And in the hazel-thicket hangs

The silence of a tomb.

A shade comes o’er the face of day,

Tempering afresh the genial May;

The light air softly drops,

And nestles in the tall tree-heads,

And stirs the violets in the glades,

The spraylets in the copse.

In such an hour as this,

The earth-impeded soul,

Entranced with Nature’s bliss,

Surmounts the Bear-watched Pole,

And the great space wherein the firm spheres roll;

Knows of a brighter Sun,

Basks in his beams,

Sees crystal waters run,

And drinks their streams,

And spreads her wings, and floats into the land of dreams—

Dreams vague, uncomprehended.

Fold again

Those unfledged wings, poor Captive of the clay!

The flesh has need of thee, thy moans are vain,

Vain thy forebodings of the Coming Day;

Only the World’s fair beauty bids thee hope

That none more dark may lie beyond the Cope.

And the Beam, unsaddened

Is on the wood,

And the Soul is gladdened,

And sways her mood

Into a chastened mirth, the joy of Solitude.

Now the hushed noon,

Growing broad and bright,

Like the painless swoon

Of a deep delight,

Slumbers as calmly as a moonlit Night.

The Memories of Childhood cannot pass

The Joy of such an hour of Nature’s Joy;

The brawling of the brook, the lisping grass

Should charm the Man more than they charmed the Boy.

They do, they do, I feel their influence

With fresh delight to-day, and unpolluted sense.

Sickness may bend the weak corporeal frame,

And Grief anticipate the work of years:

Beautiful Nature’s sighs would still the same

Delight mine eye, even through the mist of tears.

The fountains of our pleasures need not change,

—Though Inexperience cease to veil the Truth;

The Senses’ strength not circumscribe their range

Nor the Heart’s impulses have Age and Youth.

O Sun, Earth, Water, all-embracing sky,

May it be mine to see you smiling when I die!

III.

“Death cannot be an evil, for it is universal.”—Last words of Schiller.

Earth is the realm of Death, who reigns,

—No King of Shadows he—

O’er towers, and towns, and sacred fanes,

On land, and ships at Sea.

His subjects all avoid his Court,

Small love they bear to him;

For when he mingles in their sport,

The business waxes grim.

They make alliances with life,

And fear to be alone;

Flushed with the brilliancy and strife

Which round their path is thrown.

Yet some can wander up and down,

Where daisies hide the sod;

Far from the turmoil of the Town,

They own that Death is God.

Yes, without Death our Life were nought;

Death consummates our hopes—

The one bright Day-beam softly brought

Above the misty slopes.

IV.

“God said, Let us make man in our own image.”

Stand by the Ocean:

Behold its undulating shelves,

How they alternately uplift themselves—

Their ceaseless motion!

Turn to the Sky:

Night after night, the golden-visaged crowds

Peep at us through the clouds,

Till royal Morning ope her dreaded eye.

Earth’s days and hours,

Seed-time and harvest, cold and heat, remain,

And bring forth fruit, by sunshine and by rain,

After the flowers.

Unchanging laws

This brute Creation’s pulses sway;

Contented, they obey

No self-originated cause.

That power is given,

Of all created things, to Man alone,

Who is, if he will only take his own,

Made free of Heaven.

H. G. K.

India, 1851.

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