Dear little Isle of ours! your very clouds,
Ranged in the east and battlemented black,
White flock of zenith, or, with stormy glory,
Tumbling tumultuous o’er the western hills,
Lend power and beauty to your pictured face,
Relieved and deepened in its light and shade,
Varied of dale and mountain, pleasing still
Through all the seasons, as they come and go,—
Blue airy Summer, Autumn brown and grave,
Gnarled sapless Winter, and clear glinting Spring.

Mine be the cottage, large enough for use,
Yet fully occupied, and cheerful thus.
Desolate he who, with his means abridged,
And wants reduced, yet pride of property
Still unimpaired, dwells in a narrow flank;
Of his ancestral house, gloomily vast
Beyond his need,—dwells with the faded ghost
Of former greatness. There the bellied spider,
That works in cool and silent palaces,
Has halls his own. The labyrinthine rooms
Seem haunted all. Mysterious laden airs
Move the dim tapestries drearily. And shapes
Spectral at hollow midnight beckoning glide
Down the far corridors, and faint away.

Up with the summer sun! Earlier at times,
And see gray brindled dawn come up before him;
There’s natural health, there’s moral healing in
The hour so naked clear, so dewy cool!
But oft I wish a chamber in the black
Castle of Indolence, far in, where spark
Of prying light ne’er comes, nor sound of cock
Is heard, nor the long howl of houseless cur,
Nor clock, nor shrill-winged gnat, nor buzzing fly
That, by the snoring member undeterred,
Aye settles on your nose’s tickled tip
Tormentingly. Deep in that charmÈd rest
Laid, I could sleep the weary world away,
Months at a time—so listless fancy thinks.

Oh! curse of sleeplessness! Haggard and pale,
The tyrant Nero, see him from his bed
Wandering about, haunting the long dim halls,
And silent stairs, at midnight, startled oft
At his own footsteps, like a guilty thing
Sharp turning round aghast. The palace sleeps,
And all the city sleeps, all save its lord.
Then looks he to the windows of the east,
Wearily watching for the morning light,
That comes not at his will. Down on his bed
He flings himself again. His eyeballs ache;
His temples throb; his pillow’s hot and hard;
And through his dried brain thoughts and feelings drift,
Tumultuous, unrestrained, carrying his soul
On the high fever’s surge. The imperial world
For one short dewy hour of healing sleep!
Worlds cannot buy the blessing. Up he reels,
And staggers forth. Slow-coming day at length
Has found him thus. Its living busy forms,
Its turms, its senators, its gorgeous guests,
Bowing in homage from barbaric isles,
Its scenes, its duties are to him a strange
Phantasmagoria: Through its ghastly light
Wildered he lives. To feel and be assured
He yet has hold on being, with the drugs
Of monstrous pleasures, cruelty and lust,
He drugs his spirit; ever longing still
For the soft hour of eve, if sleep may come
After another day has worn him out.
But images of black, bed-fellows strange,
Lie down with him; drawing his curtain back,
Unearthly shapes, and unimagined faces,
Look in upon him, near down on his eyes,
Nearer and nearer still, till they are forced
To wink beneath the infliction, like a weight
Of actual pressure, solid, heavy, felt.
But winking hard, a thousand coloured motes
Begin to dance confused, and central stars,
And spots of light, welling and widening out
In rings concentric, peopling all the blind
Black vacancy before his burning balls.
But soon they change to leering antic shapes,
And dread-suggesting fiends. Dim, far away,
Long dripping corpses, swaying in the waves,
Slowly cast up, arise; gashed, gory throats,
And headless trunks of men, are nearer seen,
And every form of tragic butchery—
The myriad victims of his power abused
By sea and land. To give their hideousness
Due light, a ceiling of clear molten fire,
Figured with sprawling imps, begins to glow
Hot overhead, casting a brazen light
Down on the murdered crew. All bent on him,
Near, nearer still, they swarm, they crowd, they press;
And round and round, and through and through the rout,
The naked Pleasures, knit with demons, dance.
Wild whirls his brain anew. This night is as
The last, and far more terrible. Guilt thus,
And sleeplessness, more than perpetuate
Each other—dreadful lineage! Let us hope,
For human nature, that the man was mad.

Up from your blameless sleep, go forth and meet
The glistening morn, over the smoking lawn
Spangled, by briery balks, and brambled lanes,
Where blows the dog-rose, and the honey-suckle
Hangs o’er the heavy hedge its trailing sheaf
Of stems and leaves, tendrils and clasping rings,
Cold dews, and bugle blooms, and honey smells,
And wild bees swinging as they murmur there.
The speckled thrush, startled from off the thorn,
Shakes down the crystal drops. With spurring haste,
The rabbit scuds across the grassy path;
Pauses a moment—with its form and ears
Arrect to listen; then, with glimpse of white,
Springs through the hedge into the ferny brake.
Or taste the freshness of the pastoral hills
On such a morn: Light scarfs of thinning mist
In graceful lingerings round their shoulders hang;
New-washed and white, the sheep go nibbling up
The high green slopes; a hundred gurgling rills,
Sparkling with foam-bells, to your very heart
Send their delicious coolness; hark! again,
The cuckoo somewhere in the sunny skirts
Of yonder patch of the old natural woods;
With sudden iron croak, clear o’er the gray
Summit, o’erhanging you, with levell’d flight,
The raven shoots into the deep blue air.

Lo! in the confluence of the mountain glens,
The small gray ruin of an ancient kirk.
’Twas the first kirk, so faithful reverence tells,
Of Scotland’s Reformation: And it drew,
Now as before, from all the hills around
The worshippers; till, in a richer vale,
To suit the populous hamlet rising there,
A larger, nearer parish church was built.
Thus was the old one left. But there it stands,
And there will stand till the slow tooth of Time
Nibble it all away; for it is fenced
Completely round, not with just awe alone,
But superstitious fears, the abuse of awe
In simple minds: Strange judgments, so they say,
Have fallen on those who once or twice have dared
To lay their hands upon its holy stones
For secular uses, and remove its bell.
With such excess of love—we’ll blame it not—
Does Scotland love her Church. Be it so still
And be its emblem still the Burning Bush!
Bush of the wilderness! See how the flames
Bicker and burn around it; but a low
Soft breath of the great Spirit of Salvation
Blows gracious by, and the dear little Bush,
The desert Bush, in every freshened leaf
Uncurled, unsinged in every flowery bud,
Fragrant with heavenly dews, and dropping balsams
Good for the hurt soul’s healing, waves and rustles,
Even in the very heart of the red burning,
In livelier green and fairer blossoming.

Earth sends her soft warm incense up to heaven;
The birds their matins sing. Joining the hymn,
The tremulous voice of psalms from human lips
Is heard in the free air. You wonder where,
And who the worshippers. Behold them now,
Down in the grassy hollow lowly seated,
Close by the mountain burn—an old gray man,
His head uncovered, and the Book of life
Spread on his knee, a female by his side,
His aged wife, both beggars by their garb,
With frail cracked voices, yet with hearts attuned
To the immortal harmonies of faith,
And hope, and love, in the green wilderness
Praising the Lord their God—a touching sight!
High in the Heavenly House not made with hands,
The archangels sing, angels, and saints in white,
Striking their golden harps before the Throne;
But, in the pauses of the symphony
A voice comes up from Earth, the simple psalm
Of those old beggars, heard by the Ear of God
With more acceptance than hosannahs sung
In blissful jubilee. ’Tis hard to think
The people of the Lord must beg their bread;
Yet happy they who, poor as this old twain
On earth, like them, have laid fast titled hold
Upon the treasures of Eternity!

Her nest is here: But ah! the cunning thing,
See where our White-throat, like the partridge, feigns
A broken wing, thick fluttering o’er the ground,
And tumbling oft, to draw you from her brood
Within the bush. Now that’s a lie, my birdie!
Your wing’s not broken; but we’ll grant you this,—
The lie’s a white one, white as your own throat.
Yet how should He who is the Truth itself,
And whose unquestioned prompting instinct is,
Implant deceit within your little breast,
And make you act it, even to save your young?
The whole creation groans for man, for sin,
And death its consequence: We’re changed to you
In our relations, birdie; as a part
Of that primeval ill, we rob your nest.
To meet this change, and in God’s own permission
Of moral wrong, was it, that guile was given
Even to the truest instinct of your love;
And your deceit is our reflected sin?
Subtle philosopher, or sound divine,
’Tis a grave question; can you answer it?
The more we wonder at the curious warp
From truth, the more we see the o’erruling law
Of natural love in all things, which will be
A fraud in instinct, rather than a flaw
In care parental. Oh! how gracious good,
That all the generations, as they rise,
Of living things are not sustained by one
Great abstract fiat of Benevolence;
But by a thousand separate forms of love,
All tremblingly alive: The human heart,
With all its conduits and its channel-pipes,
Warm, flowing, full, quiveringly keen and strong
In all its tendrils and its bloody threads,
Laying hold of its children with the fast
Bands of a man; fish, bird, beast, reptile, insect,
The wallowing, belching monsters of the deep,
Down to the filmiest people of the leaf,
Are all God’s nurses, and draw out the breast,
Or brood for Him. Oh! what a system thus
Of active love, of every shape and kind,
Has been created, from the Heart of Heaven
Extended, multiplied, personified
In living forms throughout the Universe!

In life’s first glee, and first untutored grace,
With raven tresses, and with glancing eyes,
How beautiful those children, lustrous dark,
Pulling the kingcups in the flowery meadow!
Born of an Indian Mother: She by night,
An orphan damsel on her native hills,
Looked down the Khyber Pass, with pity touched
For the brave strangers that lay slain in heaps,
Low in that fatal fold and pen of death.
Sorrow had taught her mercy: Forth she went
With simple cordials from her lonely cot,
If she might help to save some wounded foe.
By cavern went she, and tall ice-glazed rock,
Casting its spectral shadow on the snow,
Beneath the hard blue moon. Save her own feet
Crushing the starry spangles of the frost,
Sound there was none on all the silent hills;
And silence filled the valley of the dead.
Down went the maid aslant. A cliff’s recess
Gave forth a living form. A wounded youth,
One unit relic of that thick battue,
Escaping death, and mastering his deep hurt,
From out the bloody Pass had climbed thus far
The mountain side, and rested there a while.
The virgin near, up rose he heavily,
Staggered into the light, and stood before her,
Bowing for help. She gave him sweet-spiced milk,
And led him to her home, and hid him there
Months, till pursuit was o’er, and he was healed,
And from her mountains he could safely go.
But grateful Walter loved the Affghan girl,
And would not go without her: They had taught
Each other language: Will she go with him
To the Isles of the West, and be his wife?
Nor less she loved the fair-haired islander,
And softly answered, Yes. And she is now
His Christian wife, wondering and loving much
In this mild land, honoured and loved of all;
With such a grace of glad humility
She does her duties. And, to crown her joy
Of holy wedded life, her God has given her
Those beauteous children, with the laughing voices,
Pulling the kingcups in the flowery meadow.

Our walk is o’er. But let us see our bees,
Before we turn into our ivied porch.
The little honey-folk, how wise are they!
Their polity, their industry, their work,
The help they take from man, and what they give him
Of fragrant nectar, sea-green, clear, and sweet,
Invest them almost with the dignity
Of human neighbourhood, without the intrusion.
Coming and going, what a hum and stir!
The dewy morn they love, the sunny day,
With showery dropping balms, liquoring the flowers
In every vein and eye. But when the heavens
Grow cloudy, and the quick-engendered blasts
Darken and whiten as they skiff along
The mountain-tops, till all the nearer air,
Seized with the gloom, is turbid, dense, and cold,
Back from their far-off foraging the bees,
In myriads, saddened into small black motes,
Strike through the troubled air, sharp past your head,
And almost hitting you, their lines of flight
Converging, thickening, as they draw near home;
So much they fear the storms, so much they love
The safety of their straw-built citadels.

At times a bird slides through the glossy air,
O’er the enamelled woodlands; but no chirp
Of song is heard: All’s dumb and panting heat.
How waste and idle are yon river sands,
Far-stretching white! The stream is almost shrunk
Down to the green gleet of its slippery stones;
And in it stand the cows, switching their tails,
With circling drops, and ruminating slow.
A hermit glutton on a sodded root,
Fish-gorged, his head and bill sunk to his breast,
The lean blue heron stands, and there will stand
Motionless all the long dull afternoon.

But the old woods are near, with grateful glooms,
Dells, silent grottoes, and cold sunken wells;
There rest on mossy seats, and be refreshed:
Thankful you toil not, at this blazing hour,
Beneath the dog-star, in some sandy lane
Of the strait sea-coast town, pent closely in
With walls of fiery brick, their tops stuck o’er
With broken pointed glass, and danders hot
Fencing their feet, with sparse ears of wild barley
Parched, dun, and dead amongst them; o’er your head
The smoke of potteries, and the foundry vent
Sending its quivering exhalation up—
Heat more than smoke; to aggravate the whole,
The sweltering, smothering, suffocating whole,
The oppressive sense upon your heart of man’s
Worst dwellings round you—smells of stinking fish,
Torn dingy shirts, half washed, flea-spotted still,
Hung out on bending strings at broken windows;
Hunger, and fear, and pale disordered faces,
Lies, drunken strife, strokes, cries, and new-coined oaths,
All hot and rough from the red mint of hell.

Lo! with her screwed tail cocked aloft in air,
The cottar’s cow comes scampering clumsily.
Her, sorely cupped and leeched, the clegs have stung
From her propriety; and hoisting high
Her standard of distress, this way she comes
Cantering unwieldily, her heavy udder,
Dropping out milk, swinging from side to side.
Pathetic sight! So long have we been used
To see the solemn tenor of her life,
From calfhood to her present reverend age
Of wrinkled front, scored horns, and hollow back,—
Tenor unbroken, save when once or twice
A pool of frothy blood before the smithy
Has made her snuff, snort, paw, and toss her head,
Wheel round and round, and slavering bellow mad:
That blood the cadger’s horse, seized with the bots,
When he on cobwebbed clover, raw and cold,
Had supped, gave spouting, spinning from his neck,
Beneath the blacksmith’s mallet and his fleam.
Is this the cow, at home so patient o’er
The cool sobriety of cabbage leaves,
Hoarse cropped for her at morn, when the night-drops
Lie like big diamonds in the freshened stock,—
Drops broken, running, scattered, but again
Conglobed like quicksilver, until they fall
Shaken to earth? Is this the milky mother,
That long has given to thankful squeezing hands,
With such an air of steady usefulness,
The children’s streaming food—twelve pints a day;
And with her butter, and her cheese, and cans
Of white-green whey, has bought the grocery goods,
Snuff and tobacco? Oh! the affecting sight!
Help, help, ye Shades, the venerable brute!
But gradually subsiding to a trot,
She takes the river with a fellow-feeling,
And, modestly aloof to raise no strife,
There settles down behind the stranger cows.
Ah! Crummie, you have stolen this scampering march
Upon the little cow-herd. Far are heard
The opening roarings of his wondering fear,
Nearer and nearer still, as they come on,
Loading the noontide air. Three other friends
Had he to feed, besides the family cow.
Twin cushats young, the yellow hair now sparse
In their thick gathering plumage, nestling lie
Within his bonnet; they can snap, and strike
With raised wing; grown vigorous thus, they need
A larger dinner of provided peas.
Nor less his hawk, shrill-screaming as it shakes
Its wings for food, must have the knotted worms
From moist cold beds below the unwholesome stone,
That never has been raised—if he be quick
To raise it, and can seize them ere they slink
Into their holes, or, when half in, can draw them,
With a long, steady, gentle, equal pull,
Tenacious though they be, and tender stretched
Till every rib seems ready to give way,
Unbroken out in all their slippery length.
These now he wandered seeking, for the ground
Was parched, and they the surface all had left;
And many a stone he raised, but nothing saw,
Save insect eggs, and shells of beetles’ wings,
Slaters, cocoons, and yellow centipedes.
Thus was he drawn away. When he came back,
His cow was gone. Dismayed, he looked all round.
At last he saw, far-off on the horizon,
Her hoisted tail. He seized his birds and ran,
Following the tail, and as he ran he roared.
Yonder he comes in view with red-hot face;
Roaring the more to see old Crummie take
The river—how shall he dislodge her thence;
And get her home again? Oh! deep distress!

The world is flooded with the dazzling day.
We take the woods. Couched in the checkered skirts,
Below an elm we lie. A sylvan stream
Is sleeping by us in a cold still pool,
Within whose glassy depth the little fishes
Hang, as in crystal air. Freckled with gleams,
’Neath yonder hazelly bank that roofs it o’er
With roots and moss, it slides and slips away.
Here a ray’d spot of light, intensely clear,
Strikes our eyes through the leaves; a sunbeam there
Comes slanting in between the mossy trunks
Of the green trees, and misty shimmering falls
With a long slope down on the glossy ferns:
Light filmy flies athwart it brightening shoot,
Or dance and hover in the motty ray.

We love the umbrageous Elm. Its well-crimp’d leaf,
Serrated, fresh, and rough as a cow’s tongue,
Is healthy, natural, and cooling, far
Beyond the glazy polish of the bay,
Famed though it be, but glittering hard as if
’Twere liquor’d o’er with some metallic wash.
Thus pleased, laid back, up through the Elm o’erhead
We look. The little Creeper of the Tree
Lends life to it: See how the antic bird,
Her bosom to the bark, goes round away
Behind the trunk, but quaintly reappears
Through a rough cleft above, with busy bill
Picking her lunch; and now among the leaves
Our birdie goes, bright glimmering in the green
And yellow light that fills the tender tree.

Low o’er the burnie bends the drooping Birch:
Fair tree! Though oft its cuticle of bark
Hangs in white fluttering tatters on its breast,
No fairer twinkles in the dewy glade.
Sweet is its scented breath, the wild deer loves it,
And snuffs and browses at the budding spray.
But far more tempting to the truant’s eyes,
Wandering the woods, its thick excrescences
Of bundled matted sprigs: Soft steals he on,
To find what seems afar the cushat’s nest,
Or pie’s or crow’s. Deceived, yet if the tree
Is old, he seeks in its decaying clefts
The fungous cork-wood that gives balls to boys,
And smooth-skinn’d razor-strops to bearded men.
Bent all on play, our little urchin next
Peels off a bit of bark, and with his nails
Splits and divides the many-coated rind
To the last outer thinness; then he holds
The silky shivering film between his lips,
And pipes and whistles, mimicking the thrush.

Nor less the Beauty of our natural woods
Is useful too. What time the housewife’s pirn
(Oh, cheerless change that stopp’d the birring wheel!)
Whirled glimmering round before the evening fire,
’Twas birchen aye. And when our tough-heel’d shoes
Have stood the tear and wear of stony hills
Beyond our hope, we bless the birchen pegs.
In Norway o’er the foam, their crackling fires
Are fed with bark of birch, and there they thatch
Their simple houses with its pliant twigs.
At home, the virtues of our civic besoms
Confess the birch. The Master of the School
Is now “abroad:” Oh! may he never miss,
Wander where’er he will, the birchen shaw,
But cut the immemorial ferula,
To lay in pickle for rebellious imps,
And discipline to worth the British youth.

The Queen can make a Duke; but cannot make
One of the forest’s old Aristocrats.
Behold yon Oak! What glory in his bole,
His boughs, his branches, his broad frondent head!
The ancient Nobleman! Not She who rules
The kingdoms, many-isled, on which the sun
Never goes down, with all the investiture
Of garters, coronets, scutcheons, swords, and stars,
Could make him there at once. Patrician! Nay,
King of the woods, his independent realm!
Whate’er his titled name, there let him stand,
Fit emblem of our British constitution,
Full constituted in the rooted Past,
With powers, and forces, and accommodations,
The growth of ages, not an act or work!
Beyond this emblem of old diguity,
And far beyond the associated thought
Of “Hearts of Oak,” that mightiest incarnation
Of human power that earth has ever seen—
As when we launch’d our Nelson, and he went
Thundering around the world, driving the foe,
With all their banded hosts, from hemisphere
To hemisphere, before him, by the terror
Of his tremendous name, but overtook
And thunder-smote them down, swept from the seas,—
Beyond all this, the reverend Oak takes back
The heart to elder days of holy awe.
Such oaks are they, the hoariest of the race,
Round Lochwood Tower, the Johnstones’ ancient seat.
Bow’d down with very age, and rough all o’er
With scurfy moss, and the depending hair
Of parasitic plants, (the mistletoe,
Be sure, is there, congenial friend of old,)
They look as if no lively little bird
Durst hop upon their spirit-awing heads:
Perhaps, at midnight hour, Minerva’s bird,
The grave, staid owl, may rest a moment there.
But solemn visions swarm on every bough,
Of Druid doings in old dusky time.

When lowers the thunder cloud, and all the trees
Stand black and still, with what a trump profound
The wild bee wanders by! But here he is,
Hoarse murmuring in the fox-glove’s weigh’d-down bell.
Happy in sumner he! but when the days
Of later autumn come, they’ll find him hanging
In torpid stupor, on the horse-knot’s top;
Or by the ragweed in the school-boy’s hand,
As forth he issues, angry from his bike,
Struck down, he’ll die—what time the urchins, bent
On honey, delve into the solid ground:
They seize the yellower and the cleaner comb,
But drop it quick, when squeezing it they find
Nought there but milky maggots; then they pick
The darker bits, and suck them, though they be
Wild, bitter flavoured, in their luscious strength,
And dirty brown, and mix’d with earthen mould.
The luckier mower in the grassy mead,
Turns up with his scythe’s point, or with its edge,
The foggie’s bike, a ball of soft, dry fog.
With what a sharp, thin, acrid, pent-up buzz,
Swarming, it lives and stirs! But when the bees
Are all dislodged, and, circling, wheel away,
The swain rejoices in that bright clean honey.

Ah! there’s Miss Kitty Wren, with her cocked tail,
Cocked like a cooper’s thumb. Miss Kitty goes
In ’neath the bank, and then comes out again
By some queer hole. Thus, all the day she plies
Her quest from hedge to bank, scarce ever seen
Flying above your head in open air.
Unsmitten by the heat where now she is,
She strikes into her song—Miss Kitty’s song!
(We never think of male in Kitty’s case.)
The song is short, and varies not, but yet
’Tis not monotonous; with such a pipe
Of liquid clearness does she open it,
And, with increasing vigour, to the end
Go through it quite: Thus, all the year, she sings,
Except in frost, the spunky little bird!
On mossy stump of thorn, her curious nest
Is often built, a twig drawn over it,
To bind it firm; but more she loves the roof
Of sylvan cave over-arched, where the green twilight
Glimmers with golden light, and fox-gloves stand,
Tall, purple-faced, her goodly beef-eaters,
To guard and dignify her entrance-gate.
The ballad vouches that a wee, wee bird
Oft brings a whispered message to the ear;
So here’s our ear, Miss Wren, (your pardon! we
Must call you Mrs now,) pray, tell us how
You manage, in your crowded little house,
To feed your thirteen young, nor miss one mouth
In its due turn, but give them all fair play?
And here’s our other ear; say, ere you go,
What means the Bachelor’s Nest? ’Tis oftener found
Than the true finished one. Externally,
’Tis built as well; but ne’er we find within
The cozy feathery lining for the home
Of love parental. Is it, as some think,
And as the name, though not precise, implies,
Made for your husband, whosoe’er he be,
To sleep o’nights in? Or, as others deem,
Is it a lure to draw the loiterer’s eye
Off from the genuine nest, not far away?
Or, shy and nice, were you disturbed in building;
Or by some other instinct, fine and true,
Impelled to change your first-projected place,
And choose a safer? This your Laureate holds.

Along the shingly shallows of the burn,
The smallest bird that walks, and does not hop,
How fast yon Wagtail runs; its little feet
Quick as a mouse’s! Thus its shaking tail
Is kept in even balance, poised and straight.
With hopping movements ’twould not harmonise,
But, wagging inconveniently more,
Mar and confound the bird’s progressive way,
When off the wing. Wisdom Divine contrived
The just proportions of this compromise
Betwixt the motions of the feet and tail.
Aloft in air, each chirrup keeping time
With each successive undulation long,
The Wagtail flies, a pleasant summer bird.

A moment on the elm above our head
Rests the Green-linnet. Wordsworth says, He “from
The cottage-eaves pours forth his song in gushes.”
Not so in Scotland: Here he sometimes builds
His nest within the garden’s beechen hedge;
But never haunts our eaves. As for his song,
A few short notes, meagre and harsh, are all
This somewhat spiritless and lumpish bird
Has ever given us. Can the Master err?

With all the short thick rowing of her wings
The Magpie makes slow way. But her glib tongue
Goes chattering fast enough. In yonder fir,
The summer solstice cannnot keep her mute.
Surely, the bird should speak: Take the young pie,
And with a silver sixpence split its tongue,
’Twill speak incontinent; thus the notion runs
From simple father down to simple son,
In many parts. Oft in our boyhood’s days
We’ve seen it tried; but somehow, by bad luck,
It always happened that the poor bird died,
When, doubtless, just upon the eve of speech.
Sore was the splitting then, but far worse now:
The sixpence then, worn till it lost the head
Of George the Third, was thin as a knife’s edge,
And fitly sharp; the coin’s now thick and dull,
And makes the clumsier cleaving full of pain.
As boys we feared the magpie, for ’twas held
A bird of omen: oft ’twas seen to tear
With mad extravagant bill the cottage thatch,
Herald of death within: To neighbouring towns
The schoolboy, sent on morning messages,
Counted with awe how many pies at once
Hopped on his road; by this he learned to know
The various fortunes of the coming time.

Sweet lore was yours, O Bewick! with that eye
So keen, yet quiet, for the Beautiful,
And for the Droll—that eye so loving large!
Yet sweeter, Wilson, yours, as yours a range
More ample far, watching the goings-on
Of Nature in the boundless solitudes.
We know no happier man than him, at once,
With native powers, fixed from a restless youth,
To a great work congenial, which his might
Of conscious will has mastered ere begun;
Life’s work, and the foundation of his fame:
But oh! its sweetness, if in Nature’s eye
His is the privilege to work it out!
Such was the work of Wilson. Happy, too,
Is Audubon. When Day, like a bright bird,
Throughout the heavens has flown, chased by the black
Falcon of Night, he sleeps beneath a tree;
Upspringing with the morn, the enthusiast holds
On his green way rejoicing: His to catch,
And fix the creatures of the wilderness
In pictured forms, not in the attitudes
Of stiff convenience, but in all their play
Of happy natural life, fearless, untamed
By man’s intrusion, wanton, easy, free,
Yet full of tart peculiarities,
Freakish, and quaint, and ever picturesque,
Their secret gestures, and the wild escapes
From out their eyes; watching how Nature works
Her fine frugalities of means, even there
Where all is lavish freedom, finer still,
The compensations of her processes,
Throughout their whole economy of life.
Sweet study! Oh! for one long summer day
With Audubon in the far Western woods!

We leave the shade, and take the open fields,
Winding our way by immemorial paths,
So soft and green, the poor man’s privilege:
May jealous freedom ever keep them free!
Such is the sultry languor of the day,
The eye sees nothing clear. But now it rests
On yonder sable patch—ah! yes, a band
Of mourners gathered round a closing grave,
In the old churchyard. How unnatural
The black solemnity in such a day
Of light and life! But who was he or she
Who thus goes dust to dust? A matron ripe
In years and grace at once for death and Heaven.
Her aged father’s stay until he died,
She then was wed and widowed in one year,
And made a mother. With her infant son
She dwelt in peace, and nourished him with love.
Mild and sedate, upgrew the old-fashioned boy;
And went to church with her, a little man
In garb and gravity: you would have smiled
To see him coming in. She lifted him
Up to his seat beside her, drew him near,
And took his hand in hers. There as he sate,
Oft looked she down to see if he was sleeping;
And drowsy half, half in the languor soft
Of innocent trust and aimless piety,
The child looked up into his mother’s face.
And she looked down into his eyes, and saw
The neighbouring window in their pupils’ balls,
With all its panes, reflected small but clear;
And gave his hand soft pressure with her hand,
Still shifting, trying still to be more soft.
God took him from her. In a holy stillness
She dwelt concentred. Decent were her means,
And so she changed not outwardly. No trouble
Gave she to neighbours; but she helped them oft.
And when she died, her grave-clothes, there they were,
Made by her own preparing heart and hand,
And neatly folded in an antique chest:
Not even a pin was wanting, where, to dress
Her body with due care, a pin should be;
And every pin was stuck in its own place.
Nor was all this from any hard mistrust
Of human love, for she the charities
Took with glad heart; but from a strength of mind
Which stood equipped in every point for death,
And, loving order, loved it to the end.

The mourners all are gone. How lonely still
The churchyard now! Here in their simple graves
The generations of the hamlet sleep:
All grassy simple, save that, here and there,
Love-planted flowerets deck the lowly sod.
Blame not that sorrowing love: ’Tis far too true
To make of Burial one of the Fine Arts;
Yet the sweet thought that scented violets spring
From the loved ashes, is a natural war
Against the foul dishonours of the grave.
Bloom then, ye little flowers, and sweetly smell;
Draw up the heart’s dust in your flushing hues,
And odorous breath, and give it to the bee,
And give it to the air, circling to go
From life to life, through all that living flux
Of interchange which makes this wondrous world.
Go where it will, the dear dust is not lost;
Found it will be in its own place and form,
On that great day, the Resurrection Day.

Those shouts proclaim the village school is out.
This way and that, the children break in groups;
Some by the sunny stile, and meadow path,
Slow sauntering homeward; others to the burn
Bounding, beneath the stones, and roots, and banks,
With stealthy hand to catch the spotted trout,
Or stab the eel, or slip their noose of hair
Over the bearded loach, and jerk him out.
Here on his donkey, slow as any snail
At morn from the far farm, but, homeward now,
Willing and fast, an urchin blithe and bold
Comes scampering on: His face is to the tail
In fun grotesque; stooping, with both his hands
He holds the hairy rump; his kicking feet
Go walloping; his empty flask of tin,
That bore his noon of milk, quiver of life,
And not of death, high-bounding on his back,
Rattles the while. With many a whoop behind,
Scouring the dusty road with their bare feet,
In wicked glee, a squad of fellow-imps
Come on with thistles and with nettle-wands,
Pursuingly, intent to goad and vex
The long-eared cuddy: He, the cuddy, lays
His long ears back upon his neck, his head
Lowered the while, and out behind him flings
High his indignant heels, at once to keep
That hurly-burly of tormentors off,
And rid his back of that insulting rider.

Unconscious boyhood! Oh! the perils near
Of luring Pleasures! In the evening shade,
Drowsy reclining, in my dream I saw
A comely youth, with wanton flowing curls,
Chase down the sunlit vale a glittering flight
Of winged creatures, some like birds, and some
Like butterflies, and moths of marvellous size
And beauty, purple-ruffed, and spotted rich
With velvet tippets, and their wings like flame—
Onward they drew him to a coming cloud,
With skirts of vapoury gold, but steaming dense
And dark behind, close gathering from the ground:
And on and in he went, in heedless chase.
And straight those skirts curled inward, and became
Part of the gloom: Compacted, solid, black,
It has him in, and it will keep him there.
The cloud stood still a space, as if to give
Time for the acting of some doom within,
Ominous, silent, grim. It moved again,
Tumultuous stirred, and broke in seams and flaws,
And gave me glimpses of its inner womb:
Outdarting forkÈd tongues, and brazen fins,
Blue web-winged vampire-bats, and harpy faces,
And dragon crests, and vulture heads obscene,
I there beheld: Fierce were their levelled looks,
As if inflicted on some victim. Who
That victim was, I saw not. But are these
The painted Pleasures which that youth pursued
Adown the vale? How cruel changed! But where,
And what is he? Is he their victim there?
Heavy the cloud went passing by. From out
Its further end I saw that young man come,
Worn and dejected; specks and spots of dirt
Were on his face, and round his sunken eyes;
Hollow his cheeks, lean were his bony brows;
And lank and clammy were the locks that once
Played curling round his neck: The Passions there
Have done their work on him. With trembling limbs,
And stumbling as he went, he sate him down,
With folded arms, upon a sombre hill,
Apart from men, and from his father’s house,
That wept from him; and, sitting there, he looked
With heavy-laden eyes down on the ground.
But the night fell, and hid him from my view.

In yonder sheltered nook of nibbled sward,
Beside the wood, a gipsy band are camped;
And there they’ll sleep the summer night away.
By stealthy holes, their ragged tawny brood
Creep through the hedges, in their pilfering quest
Of sticks and pales, to make their evening fire.
Untutored things, scarce brought beneath the laws
And meek provisions of this ancient State!
Yet, is it wise, with wealth and power like hers,
And such resources of good government,
To let so many of her sons grow up
In untaught darkness and consecutive vice?
True, we are jealous free, and hate constraint,
And every cognisance o’er private life;
Yet, not to name a higher principle,
’Twere but an institution of police,
Due to society, preventative
Of crime, the cheapest and the best support
Of order, right, and law, that not one child,
In all this realm of ours, should be allowed
To grow up uninstructed for this life,
And for the next. Were every child State-claimed,
Laid hold of thus, and thus prepared to be
A proper member of society,
What founts of vice, with all their issuing streams,
Might thus be closed for ever, and at once!
Good propagating good, so far as man
Can work with God. Oh! this is the great work
To change our moral world, and people Heaven.

Would we had Christian statesmen to devise,
And shape, and work it out! Our liberties
Have limits and abatements manifold;
And soon the national will, which makes restraint
Part of its freedom, oft the soundest part,
Would recognise the wisdom of the plan,
Arming the state with full authority
For such an institute of renovation.
This work achieved at home, with what a large
Consistent exercise of power, and right
To hope the blessing, should we then go forth,
Pushing into the dark of Heathen worlds
The crystal frontiers of the invading Light,
The Gospel Light! The glad submitting Earth
Would cry, Behold, their own land is a land
Of perfect living light—how beautiful
Upon the mountains are their blessed feet!

Through yonder meadow comes the milk-maid’s song,
Clear, but not blithe, a melancholy chaunt,
With dying falls monotonous; for youth
Affects the dark and sad: Her ditty tells
Of captive lorn, or broken-hearted maid,
Left of her lover, but in dream thrice dreamt
Warned of his fate, when, with his fellow-crew
Of ghastly sailors on benighted seas
He clings to some black, wet, and slippery rock,
Soon to be washed away; what time their ship,
Driven on the whirlpool’s wheel, is sent below,
And ground upon the millstones of the sea.
The song has ceased. Up the dim elmy lane
The damsel comes. But at its leafy mouth
The one dear lad has watched her entering in,
And with her now comes softly side by side.
But oft he plucks a leaf from off the hedge,
For lack of words, in bashful love sincere;
Till, in his innocent freedom bolder grown,
He crops a dewy gowan from the path,
And greatly daring flings it at her cheek.
Close o’er the pair, along the green arcade,
Now hid, now seen against the evening sky,
The wavering, circling, sudden-wheeling bat
Plays little Cupid, blind enough for that,
And fitly fickle in his flights to be
The very Boy-god’s self. Where’er may lie
The power of arrows with the golden tips,
That silent lad is smit, nor less that girl
Is cleft of heart: Be this the token true:—
Next Sabbath morn, when o’er the pasture hills
Barefoot she comes to church, with Bible wrapped
In clean white napkin, and the sprig of mint
And southernwood laid duly in the leaves,
And down she sits beside the burn to wash
Her feet, and don her stockings and her shoes,
Before she come unto the House of Prayer,
With all her reverence of the Day, she’ll cast
(Forgive the simple thing!) her eye askance
Into the mirror of the glassy pool,
And give her ringlets the last taking touch,
For him who flung the gowan at her cheek
In that soft twilight of the elmy lane.

Pensive the setting Day, whether, as now
Cloudless it fades away, or far is seen,
In long and level parallels of light,
Purple and liquid yellow, barred with clouds,
Far in the twilight West, seen through some deep
Embrowned grove of venerable trees,
Whose pillared stems, apart, but regular,
Stand off against the sky: In such a grove,
At such an hour, permitted eyes might see
Angels, majestic Shapes, walking the earth,
Holding mild converse for the good of man.

Day melts into the West, another flake
Of sweet blue Time into the Eternal Past!