Imágenes de páginas
PDF
EPUB

O man! that from thy fair and shining youth
Age might but take the things youth needed not!

IV.

ANIMAL TRANQUILLITY AND DECAY.

A SKETCH.

THE little hedge-row birds,
That peck along the road, regard him not.
He travels on, and in his face, his step,
His gait, is one expression; every limb,
His look and bending figure, all bespeak
A man who does not move with pain, but moves
With thought. He is insensibly subdued
To settled quiet he is one by whom
All effort seems forgotten; one to whom
Long patience hath such mild composure given,
That patience now doth seem a thing of which
He hath no need. He is by Nature led
To peace so perfect, that the young behold
With envy, what the old man hardly feels.

V.

THE TWO THIEVES; OR, THE LAST STAGE OF AVARICE.

O Now that the genius of Berwick were mine,

And the skill which he learned on the banks of the Tyne!
Then the muses might deal with me just as they chose,
For I'd take my last leave both of verse and of prose.

What feats would I work with my magical hand!
Book-learning and books should be banished the land:
And for hunger and thirst, and such troublesome calls,
Every ale-house should then have a feast on its walls,

The traveller would hang his wet clothes on a chair;
Let them smoke, let them burn, not a straw would he care!
For the Prodigal Son, Joseph's Dream and his Sheaves,
Oh, what would they be to my tale of Two Thieves?
Little Dan is unbreeched, he is three birth-days old,
His grandsire that age more than thirty times told;
There are ninety good seasons of fair and foul weather
Between them--and both go a-stealing together.

With chips is the carpenter strewing his floor-
Is a cart-load of peats at an old woman's door-

Old Daniel his hand to the treasure will slide,
And his grandson's as busy at work by his side!

Old Daniel begins, he stops short—and his eye,
Through the lost look of dotage, is cunning and sly,
'Tis a look which at this time is hardly his own,
But tells a plain tale of the days that are flown.

Dan once had a heart which was moved by the wires
Of manifold pleasures and many desires:
And what if he cherished his purse? 'Twas no more
Than treading a path trod by thousands before.

"Twas a path trod by thousands; but Daniel is one
Who went something further than others have gone :
And now with old Daniel you see how it fares;
You see to what end he has brought his grey hairs.

The pair sally forth hand in hand: ere the sun
Has peered o'er the beeches their work is begun ;
And yet, into whatever sin they may fall,
This child but half knows it, and that not at all.

They hunt through the streets with deliberate tread,
And each, in his turn, is both leader and led;
And wherever they carry their plots and their wiles,
Every face in the village is dimpled with smiles.

Neither checked by the rich nor the needy they roam;
For grey-headed Dan has a daughter at home,
Who will gladly repair all the damage that's done:
And three, were it asked, would be rendered for one.

Old man! whom so oft I with pity have eyed,
I love thee, and love the sweet boy at thy side:
Long yet mayst thou live! for a teacher we see
That lifts up the veil of our nature, in thee.

VI.

THE MATRON OF JEDBURGH AND HER HUSBAND.

At Jedburgh, in the course of a tour in Scotland, my companion and I went into private lodgings for a few days; and the following verses were called forth by the character and domestic situation of our hostess.

AGE! twine thy brows with fresh spring flowers!

And call a train of laughing hours!

And bid them dance, and bid them sing;

And thou, too, mingle in the ring!
Take to thy heart a new delight;
If not, make merry in despite !

For there is one who scorns thy power;
But dance! for, under Jedburgh Tower,

There liveth, in the prime of glee,

A woman, whose years are seventy-three,
And she will dance and sing with thee.

Nay, start not at that figure, there!
Him who is rooted to his chair-
Look at him-look again! for he
Hath long been of thy family.
With legs that move not, if they can,
And useless arms, a trunk of man,
He sits; and with a vacant eye;
A sight to make a stranger sigh!
Deaf, drooping, that is now his doom:
His world is in this single room.
Is this a place for mirth and cheer-
Can merry-making enter here?

The joyous woman is the mate
Of him in that forlorn estate!
He breathes a subterraneous damp;
But bright as vesper shines her lamp:
He is as mute as Jedburgh Tower;
She jocund as it was of yore,
With all its bravery on; in times,
When, all alive with merry chimes,
Upon a sun-bright morn of May,
It roused the vale to holiday.

I praise thee, Matron! and thy due
Is praise heroic praise, and true!
With admiration I behold

Thy gladness, unsubdued and bold:
Thy looks, thy gestures, all present
The picture of a life well spent:
This do I see, and something more;
A strength unthought of heretofore!
Delighted am I for thy sake,.
And yet a higher joy partake.
Our human nature throws away
Its second twilight, and looks gay:
A land of promise and of pride
Unfolding, wide as life is wide.

Ah! see her helpless charge! enclosed
Within himself, as seems-composed;
To fear of loss, and hope of gain,
The strife of happiness and pain,
Utterly dead! yet, in the guise
Of little infants, when their eyes
Begin to follow to and fro
The persons that before them go,
He tracks her motions, quick or slow.
Her buoyant spirit can prevail

Where common cheerfulness would fail,

She strikes upon him with the heat
Of July sun; he feels it sweet:
An animal delight, though dim—
"Tis all that now remains for him!

I looked, I scanned her o'er and o'er :
The more I looked, I wondered more;
When suddenly I seemed t' espy
A trouble in her strong black eye;
A remnant of uneasy light,
A flash of something over bright!
And soon she made this matter plain,
And told me, in a thoughtful strain,
That she had borne a heavy yoke,
Been stricken by a twofold stroke:
Ill-health of body, and had pined
Beneath worse ailments of the mind.

So be it!-but let praise ascend
To Him who is our Lord and Friend!
Who from disease and suffering
Hath called for thee a second spring:
Repaid thee for that sore distress
By no untimely joyousness,

Which makes of thine a blissful state,
And cheers thy melancholy mate!

VII.

SONNET.

-" gives to airy nothing

A local habitation and a name."

and near,

THOUGH narrow be that old man's cares,
The poor old man is greater than he seems;
For he hath waking empire, wide as dreams;
An ample sov'reignty of eye and ear.
Rich are his walks with supernatural cheer;
The region of his inner spirit teems
With vital sounds, and monitory gleams
Of high astonishment and pleasing fear.

He the seven birds hath seen, that never part,-
Seen the "Seven Whistlers" in their nightly rounds,
And counted them; and oftentimes will start-
For overhead are sweeping "Gabriel's Hounds,"
Doomed, with their impious lord, the flying hart
To chase for ever on aërial ground.

VIII.

FOR THE SPOT WHERE THE HERMITAGE STOOD ON ST. HERBERT'S ISLAND, DERWENTWATER.

THIS island, guarded from profane approach
By mountains high and waters widely spread,
Is that recess to which St. Herbert came
In life's decline: a self-secluded man.
After long exercise in social cares
And offices humane, intent t'adore
The Deity with undistracted mind,
And meditate on everlasting things.

-Stranger! this shapeless heap of stones and earth
(Long be its mossy covering undisturbed !)
Is reverenced as a vestige of the abode

In which, through many seasons, from the world
Removed, and the affections of the world,
He dwelt in solitude. But he had left

A fellow-labourer, whom the good man loved
As his own soul; and when within his cave
Alone he knelt before the crucifix,

While o'er the lake the cataract of Lodore
Pealed to his orisons, and when he paced
Along the beach of this small isle, and thought
Of his companion, he would pray that both
(Now that their earthly duties were fulfilled)
Might die in the same moment. Nor in vain
So prayed he: as our chronicles report,
Though here the hermit numbered his last day,
Far from St. Cuthbert, his beloved friend,
Those holy men both died in the same hour.

Epitaphs and Elegiac Poems.

EPITAPHS

TRANSLATED FROM CHIABRERA.

I.

PERHAPS Some needful service of the state
Drew Titus from the depth of studious bowers,
And doomed him to contend in faithless courts,
Where gold determines between right and wrong.
Yet did at length his loyalty of heart,
And his pure native genius, lead him back
To wait upon the bright and gracious Muse,

« AnteriorContinuar »