A misery to him; and the Youth resigned A task he was unable to perform.
That stern yet kindly Spirit who constrains The Savoyard to quit his native rocks, The free-born Swiss to leave his narrow vales, (Spirit attached to regions mountainous, Like their own steadfast clouds,) did now impel His restless mind to look abroad with hope.
An irksome drudgery seems it to plod on, Through hot and dusty ways, or pelting storm, A vagrant Merchant bent beneath his load! Yet do such Travellers find their own delight ; And their hard service, deemed debasing now, Gained merited respect in simpler times;
When Squire, and Priest, and they who round them dwelt,
In rustic sequestration - all dependent
Upon the PEDLAR'S toil — supplied their wants,
Or pleased their fancies with the wares he brought.
Not ignorant was the Youth that still no few Of his adventurous Countrymen were led By perseverance in this track of life
To competence and ease; for him it bore Attractions manifold; - and this he chose. His Parents on the enterprise bestowed Their farewell benediction, but with hearts Foreboding evil. From his native hills He wandered far; much did he see of Men, Their manners, their enjoyments, and pursuits, Their passions and their feelings; chiefly those Essential and eternal in the heart,
That, 'mid the simpler forms of rural life, Exist more simple in their elements,
And speak a plainer language. In the woods,
A lone Enthusiast, and among the fields, Itinerant in this labor, he had passed The better portion of his time; and there Spontaneously had his affections thriven Amid the bounties of the year, the peace And liberty of Nature; there he kept, In solitude and solitary thought, His mind in a just equipoise of love. Serene it was, unclouded by the cares Of ordinary life; unvexed, unwarped By partial bondage. In his steady course, No piteous revolutions had he felt, No wild varieties of joy and grief. Unoccupied by sorrow of its own,
His heart lay open; and, by Nature tuned, And constant disposition of his thoughts, To sympathy with Man, he was alive To all that was enjoyed, where'er he went, And all that was endured; for in himself Happy, and quiet in his cheerfulness, He had no painful pressure from without That made him turn aside from wretchedness With coward fears. He could afford to suffer With those whom he saw suffer. Hence it came That in our best experience he was rich, And in the wisdom of our daily life. For hence, minutely, in his various rounds, He had observed the progress and decay Of many minds, of minds and bodies too,
The History of many Families ;
How they had prospered; how they were o'erthrown
By passion or mischance; or such misrule
Among the unthinking masters of the earth
As makes the nations groan. This active course He followed till provision for his wants
the Wanderer then resolved
To pass the remnant of his days untasked With needless services from hardship free. His calling laid aside, he lived at ease: But still he loved to pace the public roads And the wild paths; and, by the summer's warmth Invited, often would he leave his home And journey far, revisiting the scenes That to his memory were most endeared. Vigorous in health, of hopeful spirits, undamped By worldly-mindedness or anxious care; Observant, studious, thoughtful, and refreshed By knowledge gathered up from day to day; Thus had he lived a long and innocent life.
The Scottish Church, both on himself and those With whom from childhood he grew up, had held The strong hand of her purity; and still Had watched him with an unrelenting eye. This he remembered in his riper age With gratitude and reverential thoughts. But by the native vigor of his mind, By his habitual wanderings out of doors, By loneliness, and goodness, and kind works, Whate'er, in docile childhood or in youth, He had imbibed of fear or darker thought, Was melted all away: so true was this, That sometimes his religion seemed to me Self-taught, as of a dreamer in the woods; Who to the model of his own pure heart Shaped his belief as grace divine inspired, Or human reason dictated with awe.
- And surely never did there live on earth A man of kindlier nature. The rough sports And teasing ways of Children vexed not him
Indulgent listener was he to the tongue
Of garrulous age; nor did the sick man's tale, To his fraternal sympathy addressed,
Obtain reluctant hearing.
Such as might suit a rustic Sire, prepared
For Sabbath duties; yet he was a Man
Whom no one could have passed without remark. Active and nervous was his gait; his limbs And his whole figure breathed intelligence. Time had compressed the freshness of his cheek Into a narrower circle of deep red,
But had not tamed his eye; that, under brows Shaggy and gray, had meanings which it brought From years of youth; which, like a Being made Of many Beings, he had wondrous skill
To blend with knowledge of the years to come, Human, or such as lie beyond the grave.
So was He framed; and such his course of life, Who now, with no Appendage but a Staff, The prized memorial of relinquished toils, Upon that Cottage bench reposed his limbs, Screened from the sun. Supine the Wanderer lay, His eyes as if in drowsiness half shut,
The shadows of the breezy elms above
Dappling his face. He had not heard the sound Of my approaching steps, and in the shade Unnoticed did I stand, some minutes' space. At length I hailed him, seeing that his hat Was moist with water-drops, as if the brim Had newly scooped a running stream.
And ere our lively greeting into peace
Had settled, ""Tis," said I, "a burning day; My lips are parched with thirst, but you, it seems. Have somewhere found relief." He, at the word, Pointing towards a sweet-briar, bade me climb The fence where that aspiring shrub looked out Upon the public way. It was a plot
Of garden ground run wild, its matted weeds Marked with the steps of those, whom, as they passed, The gooseberry trees that shot in long lank slips, Or currants, hanging from their leafless stems In scanty strings, had tempted to o'erleap The broken wall. I looked around, and there, Where two tall hedge-rows of thick alder boughs Joined in a cool, damp nook, espied a Well Shrouded with willow-flowers and plumy fern. My thirst I slaked, and from the cheerless spot Withdrawing, straightway to the shade returned Where sate the Old Man on the Cottage bench; And, while beside him, with uncovered head, I yet was standing, freely to respire,
And cool my temples in the fanning air, Thus did he speak: "I see around me here Things which you cannot see: we die, my Friend, Nor we alone, but that which each man loved And prized in his peculiar nook of earth Dies with him, or is changed; and very soon Even of the good is no memorial left.
The Poets, in their elegies and songs Lamenting the departed, call the groves, They call upon the hills and streams to mourn, And senseless rocks: nor idly; for they speak, In these their invocations, with a voice Obedient to the strong creative power Of human passion. Sympathies there are
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