From evil-speaking; rancour, never sought,
Comes to me not; malignant truth, or lie.
Hence have I genial seasons, hence have I
Smooth passions, smooth discourse, and joyous thought:
And thus, from day to day, my little boat
Rocks in its harbour, lodging peaceably.
Blessings be with them-and eternal praise,
Who gave us nobler loves, and nobler cares,
The poets-who on earth have made us heirs
Of truth and pure delight by heavenly lays!
Oh! might my name be numbered among theirs,
Then gladly would I end my mortal days.
CHARACTERISTIC OF A FAVOURITE DOG WHICH belonged TO A FRIEND OF THE AUTHOR.
ON his morning rounds the master
Goes, to learn how all things fare;
Searches pasture after pasture,
Sheep and cattle eyes with care;
And, for silence or for talk,
He hath comrades in his walk;
Four dogs, each pair of different breed,
Distinguished, two for scent, and two for speed.
See, a hare before him started!
-Off they fly in earnest chase;
Every dog is eager-hearted,
All the four are in the race;
And the hare whom they pursue,
Hath an instinct what to do:
Her hope is near: no turn she makes,
But like an arrow, to the river takes.
Deep the river was, and crusted
Thinly by a one night's frost;
But the nimble hare hath trusted
To the ice, and safely crossed;
She hath crossed, and without heed
They are following at full speed,
When lo! the ice so thinly spread,
Breaks-and the greyhound Dart is over-head.
Better fate have Prince and Swallow
See them cleaving to the sport!
Music has no heart to follow
Little Music she stops short.
She hath neither wish nor heart,
Hers is now another part:
15
A loving creature she and brave!
And fondly strives her struggling friend to save.
From the brink her paws she stretches,
Very hands as you would say!
And afflicting moans she fetches,
As he breaks the ice away.
For herself she hath no fears,-
Him alone she sees and hears,
Makes efforts and complainings; nor gives o'er
Until her fellow sinks, and re-appears no more.
TO THE MEMORY OF THE SAME DOG.
LIE here sequestered: be this little mound
For ever thine, and be it holy ground!
Lie here, without a record of thy worth,
Beneath the covering of the common earth!
It is not from unwillingness to praise,
Or want of love, that here no stone we raise :
More thou deservest; but this man gives to man,
Brother to brother, this is all we can,
Yet they to whom thy virtues made thee dear
Shall find thee through all changes of the year:
This oak points out thy grave; the silent tree
Will gladly stand a monument of thee.
I prayed for thee, and that thy end were past;
And willingly have laid thee here at last :
For thou hadst lived, till everything that cheers
In thee had yielded to the weight of years;
Extreme old age had wasted thee away;
And left thee but a glimmering of the day;
Thy ears were deaf, and feeble were thy knees,-
I saw thee stagger in the summer breeze,
Too weak to stand against its sportive breath,
And ready for the gentlest stroke of death.
It came, and we were glad; yet tears were shed:
Both man and woman wept when thou wert dead;
Not only for a thousand thoughts that were
Old household thoughts, in which thou hadst thy share,
But for some precious boons vouchsafed to thee,
Found scarcely anywhere in like degree.
For love, that comes to all; the holy sense,
Best gift of God, in thee was most intense:
A chain of heart, a feeling of the mind,
A tender sympathy, which did thee bind
Not only to us men, but to thy kind :
Yea, for thy fellow-brutes in thee we saw
The soul of love, love's intellectual law :
Hence, if we wept, it was not done in shame;
Our tears from passion and from reason came,
And therefore shalt thou be an honoured name!
THE FORCE OF PRAYER; OR, THE FOUNDING OF BOLTON PRIORY.
"What is good for a bootless bene?”
With these dark words begins my tale;
And their meaning is, "Whence can comfort spring.
When prayer is of no avail ?"
"What is good for a bootless bene ?"
The falconer to the lady said;
And she made answer,
"Endless sorrow!"
For she knew that her son was dead.
She knew it by the falconer's words,
And from the look of the falconer's eye;
And from the love which was in her soul
For her youthful Romilly.
-Young Romilly through Barden Woods
Is ranging high and low;
And holds a greyhound in a leash,
To let slip upon buck or doe.
And the pair have reached that fearful chasm,
How tempting to bestride!
For lordly Wharf is there pent in
With rocks on either side.
This striding-place is called "the Strid,"
A name which it took of yore:
A thousand years hath it borne that name,
And shall, a thousand more.
And hither is young Romilly come,
And what may now forbid
That he, perhaps for the hundredth time,
Shall bound across "the Strid?"
He sprang in glee,-for what cared he
That the river was strong, and the rocks were steep!
-But the greyhound in the leash hung back,
And checked him in his leap.
The boy is in the arms of Wharf,
And strangled by a merciless force
For never more was young Romilly seen
Till he rose a lifeless corse.
Now there is stillness in the vale,
And long unspeaking sorrow:
Wharf shall be, to pitying hearts,
A name more sad than Yarrow.
If for a lover the lady wept,
A solace she might borrow
From death, and from the passion of death;
Old Wharf might heal her sorrow.
She weeps not for the wedding-day
Which was to be to-morrow:
Her hope was a further-looking hope,
And hers is a mother's sorrow.
He was a tree that stood alone,
And proudly did its branches wave;
And the root of this delightful tree
Was in her husband's grave!
Long, long in darkness did she sit,
And her first words were, "Let there be
In Bolton, on the field of Wharf,
A stately priory!"
The stately priory was reared,
And Wharf, as he moved along,
To matins joined a mournful voice,
Nor failed at evensong.
And the lady prayed in heaviness
That looked not for relief!
But slowly did her succour come,
And a patience to her grief.
Oh there is never sorrow of heart
That shall lack a timely end,
If but to God we turn and ask
Of Him to be our friend!
A BARKING Sound the shepherd hears,
A cry as of a dog or fox;
He halts and searches with his eyes
Among the scattered rocks:
And now at distance can discern
A stirring in a brake of fern;
And instantly a dog is seen
Glancing from that covert green.
The dog is not of mountain breed;
Its motions, too, are wild and shy;
With something, as the shepherd thinks,
Unusual in its cry:
Nor is there any one in sight
All round, in hollow or on height;
Nor shout, nor whistle strikes his ear
What is the creature doing here?
It was a cove, a huge recess,
That keeps till June December's snow;
A lofty precipice in front,
A silent tarn* below!
Far in the bosom of Helvellyn,
Remote from public road or dwelling,
Pathway, or cultivated land;
From trace of human foot or hand.
There sometimes doth a leaping fish
Send through the tarn a lonely cheer;
The crags repeat the raven's croak,
In symphony austere ;
Thither the rainbow comes-the cloud-
And mists that spread the flying shroud;
And sunbeams: and the sounding blast,
That, if it could, would hurry past,
But that enormous barrier binds it fast.
Not free from boding thoughts, a while
The shepherd stood; then makes his way
Towards the dog, o'er rocks and stones,
As quickly as he may;
Nor far had gone before he found
A human skeleton on the ground;
The appalled discoverer with a sigh
Looks round, to learn the history.
From those abrupt and perilous rocks
The man had fallen, that place of fear!
At length upon the shepherd's mind
It breaks, and all is clear:
He instantly recalled the name,
And who he was, and whence he came ;
Remembered, too, the very day
On which the traveller passed this way.
But hear a wonder, for whose sake
This lamentable tale I tell !
* "Tarn" is a small mere or lake, mostly high up in the mountains.
|