RUTH.

When Ruth was left half desolate,

Her Father took another Mate;

And so, not seven years old,

The slighted Child at her own will

Went wandering over dale and hill

In thoughtless freedom bold.

And she had made a pipe of straw

And from that oaten pipe could draw

All sounds of winds and floods;

Had built a bower upon the green,

As if she from her birth had been

An Infant of the woods.

There came a Youth from Georgia's shore,

A military Casque he wore

With splendid feathers drest;

He brought them from the Cherokees;

The feathers nodded in the breeze

And made a gallant crest.

From Indian blood you deem him sprung:

Ah no! he spake the English tongue

And bare a Soldier's name;

And when America was free

From battle and from jeopardy

He cross the ocean came.

With hues of genius on his cheek

In finest tones the Youth could speak.

--While he was yet a Boy

The moon, the glory of the sun,

And streams that murmur as they run

Had been his dearest joy.

He was a lovely Youth! I guess

The panther in the wilderness

Was not so fair as he;

And when he chose to sport and play,

No dolphin ever was so gay

Upon the tropic sea.

Among the Indians he had fought,

And with him many tales he brought

Of pleasure and of fear,

Such tales as told to any Maid

By such a Youth in the green shade

Were perilous to hear.

He told of Girls, a happy rout,

Who quit their fold with dance and shout

Their pleasant Indian Town

To gather strawberries all day long,

Returning with a choral song

When day-light is gone down.

He spake of plants divine and strange

That ev'ry day their blossoms change,

Ten thousand lovely hues!

With budding, fading, faded flowers

They stand the wonder of the bowers

From morn to evening dews.

He told of the Magnolia, [6] spread

High as a cloud, high over head!

The Cypress and her spire,

Of flowers that with one scarlet gleam [7]

Cover a hundred leagues and seem

To set the hills on fire.

[Footnote 6: Magnolia grandiflora.]

[Footnote 7: The splendid appearance of these scarlet flowers,

which are scattered with such profusion over the Hills in the

Southern parts of North America is frequently mentioned by Bartram

in his Travels.]

The Youth of green Savannahs spake,

And many an endless endless lake

With all its fairy crowds

Of islands that together lie

As quietly as spots of sky

Among the evening clouds:

And then he said "How sweet it were

A fisher or a hunter there,

A gardener in the shade,

Still wandering with an easy mind

To build a household fire and find

A home in every glade."

"What days and what sweet years! Ah me!

Our life were life indeed, with thee

So pass'd in quiet bliss,

And all the while" said he "to know

That we were in a world of woe.

On such an earth as this!"

And then he sometimes interwove

Dear thoughts about a Father's love,

"For there," said he, "are spun

Around the heart such tender ties

That our own children to our eyes

Are dearer than the sun."

Sweet Ruth! and could you go with me

My helpmate in the woods to be,

Our shed at night to rear;

Or run, my own adopted bride,

A sylvan huntress at my side

And drive the flying deer.

"Beloved Ruth!" No more he said

Sweet Ruth alone at midnight shed

A solitary tear,

She thought again--and did agree

With him to sail across the sea,

And drive the flying deer.

"And now, as fitting is and right,

We in the Church our faith will plight,

A Husband and a Wife."

Even so they did; and I may say

That to sweet Ruth that happy day

Was more than human life.

Through dream and vision did she sink,

Delighted all the while to think

That on those lonesome floods

And green Savannahs she should share

His board with lawful joy, and bear

His name in the wild woods.

But, as you have before been told,

This Stripling, sportive gay and bold,

And, with his dancing crest,

So beautiful, through savage lands

Had roam'd about with vagrant bands

Of Indians in the West.

The wind, the tempest roaring high,

The tumult of a tropic sky

Might well be dangerous food.

For him, a Youth to whom was given

So much of earth so much of Heaven,

And such impetuous blood.

Whatever in those climes he found

Irregular in sight or sound

Did to his mind impart

A kindred impulse, seem'd allied

To his own powers, and justified

The workings of his heart.

Nor less to feed voluptuous thought

The beauteous forms of Nature wrought,

Fair trees and lovely flowers;

The breezes their own languor lent,

The stars had feelings which they sent

Into those magic bowers.

Yet, in his worst pursuits, I ween,

That sometimes there did intervene

Pure hopes of high intent:

For passions link'd to forms so fair

And stately, needs must have their share

Of noble sentiment.

But ill he liv'd, much evil saw

With men to whom no better law

Nor better life was known;

Deliberately and undeceiv'd

Those wild men's vices he receiv'd,

And gave them back his own.

His genius and his moral frame

Were thus impair'd, and he became

The slave of low desires;

A man who without self-controul

Would seek what the degraded soul

Unworthily admires.

And yet he with no feign'd delight

Had woo'd the Maiden, day and night

Had luv'd her, night and morn;

What could he less than love a Maid

Whose heart with so much nature play'd

So kind and so forlorn?

But now the pleasant dream was gone,

No hope, no wish remain'd, not one,

They stirr'd him now no more,

New objects did new pleasure give,

And once again he wish'd to live

As lawless as before.

Meanwhile as thus with him it fared.

They for the voyage were prepared

And went to the sea-shore,

But, when they thither came, the Youth

Deserted his poor Bride, and Ruth

Could never find him more.

"God help thee Ruth!"--Such pains she had

That she in half a year was mad

And in a prison hous'd,

And there, exulting in her wrongs,

Among the music of her songs

She fearfully carouz'd.

Yet sometimes milder hours she knew,

Nor wanted sun, nor rain, nor dew,

Nor pastimes of the May,

They all were with her in her cell,

And a wild brook with chearful knell

Did o'er the pebbles play.

When Ruth three seasons thus had lain

There came a respite to her pain,

She from her prison fled;

But of the Vagrant none took thought,

And where it liked her best she sought

Her shelter and her bread.

Among the fields she breath'd again:

The master-current of her brain

Ran permanent and free,

And to the pleasant Banks of Tone [8]

She took her way, to dwell alone

Under the greenwood tree.

The engines of her grief, the tools

That shap'd her sorrow, rocks and pools,

And airs that gently stir

The vernal leaves, she loved them still,

Nor ever tax'd them with the ill

Which had been done to her.

[Footnote 8: The Tone is a River of Somersetshire at no great

distance from the Quantock Hills. These Hills, which are alluded to

a few Stanzas below, are extremely beautiful, and in most places

richly covered with Coppice woods.]

A Barn her _winter_ bed supplies,

But till the warmth of summer skies

And summer days is gone,

(And in this tale we all agree)

She sleeps beneath the greenwood tree,

And other home hath none.

If she is press'd by want of food

She from her dwelling in the wood

Repairs to a road side,

And there she begs at one steep place,

Where up and down with easy pace

The horsemen-travellers ride.

That oaten pipe of hers is mute

Or thrown away, but with a flute

Her loneliness she cheers;

This flute made of a hemlock stalk

At evening in his homeward walk

The Quantock Woodman hears.

I, too have pass'd her on the hills

Setting her little water-mills

By spouts and fountains wild,

Such small machinery as she turn'd

Ere she had wept, ere she had mourn'd

A young and happy Child!

Farewel! and when thy days are told

Ill-fated Ruth! in hallow'd mold

Thy corpse shall buried be,

For thee a funeral bell shall ring,

And all the congregation sing

A Christian psalm for thee.

_LINES

Written with a Slate-pencil upon a Stone, the largest of a heap

lying near a deserted Quarry, upon one of the Islands at Rydale_.

Stranger! this hillock of mishapen stones

Is not a ruin of the ancient time,

Nor, as perchance thou rashly deem'st, the Cairn

Of some old British Chief: 'tis nothing more

Than the rude embryo of a little dome

Or pleasure-house, which was to have been built

Among the birch-trees of this rocky isle.

But, as it chanc'd, Sir William having learn'd

That from the shore a full-grown man might wade,

And make himself a freeman of this spot

At any hour he chose, the Knight forthwith

Desisted, and the quarry and the mound

Are monuments of his unfinish'd task.--

The block on which these lines are trac'd, perhaps,

Was once selected as the corner-stone

Of the intended pile, which would have been

Some quaint odd play-thing of elaborate skill,

So that, I guess, the linnet and the thrush,

And other little builders who dwell here,

Had wonder'd at the work. But blame him not,

For old Sir William was a gentle Knight

Bred in this vale to which he appertain'd

With all his ancestry. Then peace to him

And for the outrage which he had devis'd

Entire forgiveness.--But if thou art one

On fire with thy impatience to become

An Inmate of these mountains, if disturb'd

By beautiful conceptions, thou hast hewn

Out of the quiet rock the elements

Of thy trim mansion destin'd soon to blaze

In snow-white splendour, think again, and taught

By old Sir William and his quarry, leave

Thy fragments to the bramble and the rose,

There let the vernal slow-worm sun himself,

And let the red-breast hop from stone to stone.

_In the School of ---- is a tablet on which are inscribed, in gilt

letters, the names of the federal persons who have been

Schoolmasters there since the foundation of the School, with the

time at which they entered upon and quitted their office. Opposite

one of those names the Author wrote the following lines_.

If Nature, for a favorite Child

In thee hath temper'd so her clay,

That every hour thy heart runs wild

Yet never once doth go astray,

Read o'er these lines; and then review

This tablet, that thus humbly rears

In such diversity of hue

Its history of two hundred years.

--When through this little wreck of fame,

Cypher and syllable, thine eye

Has travell'd down to Matthew's name,

Pause with no common sympathy.

And if a sleeping tear should wake

Then be it neither check'd nor stay'd:

For Matthew a request I make

Which for himself he had not made.

Poor Matthew, all his frolics o'er,

Is silent as a standing pool,

Far from the chimney's merry roar,

And murmur of the village school.

The sighs which Matthew heav'd were sighs

Of one tir'd out with fun and madness;

The tears which came to Matthew's eyes

Were tears of light, the oil of gladness.

Yet sometimes when the secret cup

Of still and serious thought went round

It seem'd as if he drank it up,

He felt with spirit so profound.

--Thou soul of God's best earthly mould,

Thou happy soul, and can it be

That these two words of glittering gold

Are all that must remain of thee?

The Two April Mornings.

We walk'd along, while bright and red

Uprose the morning sun,

And Matthew stopp'd, he look'd, and said,

"The will of God be done!"

A village Schoolmaster was he,

With hair of glittering grey;

As blithe a man as you could see

On a spring holiday.

And on that morning, through the grass,

And by the steaming rills,

We travell'd merrily to pass

A day among the hills.

"Our work," said I, "was well begun;

Then, from thy breast what thought,

Beneath so beautiful a sun,

So sad a sigh has brought?"

A second time did Matthew stop,

And fixing still his eye

Upon the eastern mountain-top

To me he made reply.

Yon cloud with that long purple cleft

Brings fresh into my mind

A day like this which I have left

Full thirty years behind.

And on that slope of springing corn

The self-same crimson hue

Fell from the sky that April morn,

The same which now I view!

With rod and line my silent sport

I plied by Derwent's wave,

And, coming to the church, stopp'd short

Beside my Daughter's grave.

Nine summers had she scarcely seen

The pride of all the vale;

And then she sang!--she would have been

A very nightingale.

Six feet in earth my Emma lay,

And yet I lov'd her more,

For so it seem'd, than till that day

I e'er had lov'd before.

And, turning from her grave, I met

Beside the church-yard Yew

A blooming Girl, whose hair was wet

With points of morning dew.

The FOUNTAIN,

_A Conversation_.

We talk'd with open heart, and tongue

Affectionate and true,

A pair of Friends, though I was young,

And Matthew seventy-two.

We lay beneath a spreading oak,

Beside a mossy seat,

And from the turf a fountain broke,

And gurgled at our feet.

Now, Matthew, let us try to match

This water's pleasant tune

With some old Border-song, or catch

That suits a summer's noon.

Or of the Church-clock and the chimes

Sing here beneath the shade,

That half-mad thing of witty rhymes

Which you last April made!

On silence Matthew lay, and eyed

The spring beneath the tree;

And thus the dear old Man replied,

The grey-hair'd Man of glee.

"Down to the vale this water steers,

How merrily it goes!

Twill murmur on a thousand years,

And flow as now it flows."

And here, on this delightful day,

I cannot chuse but think

How oft, a vigorous Man, I lay

Beside this Fountain's brink.

My eyes are dim with childish tears.

My heart is idly stirr'd,

For the same sound is in my ears,

Which in those days I heard.

Thus fares it still in our decay:

And yet the wiser mind

Mourns less for what age takes away

Than what it leaves behind.

The blackbird in the summer trees,

The lark upon the hill,

Let loose their carols when they please,

Are quiet when they will.

With Nature never do _they_ wage

A foolish strife; they see

A happy youth, and their old age

Is beautiful and free:

But we are press'd by heavy laws,

And often, glad no more,

We wear a face of joy, because

We have been glad of yore.

If there is one who need bemoan

His kindred laid in earth,

The houshold hearts that were his own,

It is the man of mirth.

"My days, my Friend, are almost gone,

My life has been approv'd,

And many love me, but by none

Am I enough belov'd."

"Now both himself and me he wrongs,

The man who thus complains!

I live and sing my idle songs

Upon these happy plains,"

"And, Matthew, for thy Children dead

I'll be a son to thee!"

At this he grasp'd his hands, and said,

"Alas! that cannot be."

We rose up from the fountain-side,

And down the smooth descent

Of the green sheep-track did we glide,

And through the wood we went,

And, ere we came to Leonard's Rock,

He sang those witty rhymes

About the crazy old church-clock

And the bewilder'd chimes.