INTRODUCTORY NOTE.

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, 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! 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 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 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 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 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, 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 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 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, 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 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 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: 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 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 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] 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 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 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! 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. 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! 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 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 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. 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 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. 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! 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 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; 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, 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 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 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 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; 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 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 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— 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 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. 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 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 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 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. 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. 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 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 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), 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 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 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 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 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, 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! 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.— 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 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, 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 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 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, 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!

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.

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.

“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!

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.

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?

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.

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.

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!

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.

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.

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.

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.

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!

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.

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.

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.

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.

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!

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.

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!

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!

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.

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.

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!

’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.

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!

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.

“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.

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.

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?

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.