The bud is in the bough
And the leaf is in the bud,
And Earth’s beginning now
In her veins to feel the blood,
Which, warm’d by summer’s sun
In th’ alembic of the vine,
From her founts will overrun
In a ruddy gush of wine.
The perfume and the bloom
That shall decorate the flower,
Are quickening in the gloom
Of their subterranean bower;
And the juices meant to feed
Trees, vegetables, fruits,
Unerringly proceed
To their preappointed roots.
How awful the thought
Of the wonders under ground,
Of the mystic changes wrought
In the silent, dark profound;
How each thing upwards tends
By necessity decreed,
And a world’s support depends
On the shooting of a seed!
The Summer’s in her ark,
And this sunny-pinion’d day
Is commission’d to remark
Whether Winter holds her sway;
Go back, thou dove of peace,
With the myrtle on thy wing,
Say that floods and tempests cease,
And the world is ripe for Spring.
Thou hast fann’d the sleeping Earth
Till her dreams are all of flowers,
And the waters look in mirth
For their overhanging bowers;
The forest seems to listen
For the rustle of its leaves,
And the very skies to glisten
In the hope of summer eves.
Thy vivifying spell
Has been felt beneath the wave,
By the dormouse in its cell,
And the mole within its cave;
And the summer tribes that creep,
Or in air expand their wing,
Have started from their sleep,
At the summons of the Spring.
The cattle lift their voices
From the valleys and the hills,
And the feather’d race rejoices
With a gush of tuneful bills;
And if this cloudless arch
Fills the poet’s song with glee,
O thou sunny first of March,
Be it dedicate to thee!
This beautiful poem has afforded me exquisite gratification. Till I saw
it printed in Mr. Dyce’s “Specimens of British Poetesses,” I was
ignorant that a living lady had written so delightfully. Without a
friend at my elbow to instruct me whether I should prefix “Miss” or
“Mrs.” to her felicitous name, I transcribe--as I find it in Mr. Dyce’s
volume--FELICIA HEMANS.
Vol. I.--10.
[Illustration: ~The Story of the Scotch Soldier.~]
“Upon my soul it’s a fact.”
MATTHEWS--_and Self_.
_For the Table Book._
“Is the master at home, sir?” said a broad-shouldered Scotchman (wearing
a regimental coat of the ---- regiment, and with his bonnet in his hand)
to myself, who had answered a ring at the office-bell. I replied that he
was not. “Weel, that’s onlucky, sir,” said he, “for ye see, sir, a hae
goten a pertection here, an’ a hae been till a’ the Scotchmen that a can
hear ony thing o’, but they hae a’ signed for the month; an’ a hae a
shorteness o’ brith, that wunna lat me wurk or du ony thing; an’ a’d be
vary glaid gin a cud git doon to Scoteland i’ the nixt vaissel, for a
hanna’ a baubee; an’, as a sid afore, a canna wurk, an’ gin maister B.
wud jist sign ma pertection, a hae twa seagnatures, an’ a’d git awa’
the morn.” For once I had told no lie in denying Mr. B. to his visitor,
and, therefore, in no dread of detection from cough, or other vivâ voce
evidence, I ushered the “valiant Scot” into the _sanctum_ of a lawyer’s
clerk.
There is a very laudable benevolent institution in London, called the
“Scottish Hospital,” which, on proper representations made to it, signed
by three of its members, (forms whereof are annexed, in blank, to the
printed petition, which is given gratuitously to applicants,) will pass
poor natives of Scotland to such parts of their father-land as they
wish, free of expense, and will otherwise relieve their wants; but each
member is only allowed to sign one petition each month. This poor
fellow had come in hopes of obtaining Mr. B.’s signature to his request
to be sent home; and, while waiting to procure it, told me the
circumstances that had reduced him to ask it.
He was a native of ----, where the rents had lately been raised, by a
new laird, far beyond the capabilities of the tacksmen. They had done
their best to pay them--had struggled long, and hard, with an ungrateful
soil--but their will and industry were lost; and they were, finally,
borne down by hard times, and harsh measures. ’Twas hard to leave the
hearths which generations of their forefathers had shadowed and
hallowed--’twas yet harder to see their infants’ lips worrying the
exhausted breast, and to watch the cheeks of their children as they grew
pale from want--and to see their frolics tamed by hunger into inert
stupidity. An American trader had just touched at their island, for the
purpose of receiving emigrants, and half its inhabitants had domiciled
themselves on board, before her arrival had been known twelve hours. Our
poor Scot would fain have joined them, with his family and parents, but
he lacked the means to provide even the scanty store of oatmeal and
butter which they were required to ship before they could be allowed to
step on deck; so, in a fit of distress and despair, he left the home
that had never been a day out of his sight, and enlisted with a party of
his regiment, then at ----, for the sole purpose of sending to the
afflicted tenants of his “bit housey,” the poor pittance of bounty he
received, to be a short stay ’twixt them and starvation.
He had been last at St. John’s, Newfoundland; “and there,” said he,
indignantly, “they mun mak’ a cook’s orderly o’ me, as gin a war’ nae as
proper a man as ony o’ them to carry a musket; an’ they sint me to du a’
the odd jobes o’ a chap that did a wife’s-wark, tho’ there were a gude
fivety young chaps i’ the regiment that had liked it wul aneugh, and
were better fetting for the like o’ sican a place than mysel.--And so,
sir,” he continued, “thar a was, working mysel intill a scalding heat,
and than a’d geng out to carry in the cauld water; an’ i’ the deeing
o’t, a got a cauld that sattled inwardly, an’ garr’d me hae a fivre an’
spit blood. Weel, sir, aifter mony months, a gote better; but oh! a was
unco weak, and but a puir creature frae a strong man afore it: but a did
na mak muckle o’t, for a thought ay, gin ony thing cam o’t to disable
me, or so, that a should hae goten feve-pence or sax-pence a-day an’
that had been a great help.”
----Oh! if the rich would but take the trouble to learn how many happy
hearts they might make at small expense--and fashion their deeds to
their knowledge--how many prayers might nightly ascend with their names
from grateful bosoms to the recording angel’s ears--and how much better
would the credit side of their account with eternity appear on that day,
when the great balance must be struck!----
There was a pause--for my narrator’s breath failed him; and I took the
opportunity of surveying him. He was about thirty, with a half hale,
half hectic cheek; a strong red beard, of some three days’ growth, and a
thick crop of light hair, such as only Scotchmen have--one of the Cain’s
brands of our northern brethren--it curled firmly round his forehead;
and his head was set upon his broad shoulders with that pillar of neck
which Adrian in particular, and many other of the Roman emperors, are
represented with, on their coins, but which is rarely seen at present.
He must, when in full health, have stood about five feet seven; but,
now, he lost somewhat of his height in a stoop, contracted during his
illness, about the chest and shoulders, and common to most people
affected with pulmonary complaints: his frame was bulky, but the sinews
seemed to have lost their tension; and he looked like “one of might,”
who had grappled strongly with an evil one in sore sickness. He bore no
air of discontent, hard as his lot was; yet there was nothing theatrical
in his resignation. All Scotchmen are predestinarians, and he fancied he
saw the immediate hand of Providence working out his destiny through his
misfortunes, and against such interference he thought it vain to
clamour. Far other were my feelings when I looked on his fresh, broad
face, and manly features, his open brow, his width of shoulders, and
depth of chest, and heard how the breath laboured in that chest for
inefficient vent----
“May be,” said he--catching my eye in its wanderings, as he raised his
own from the ground,--“May be a’d be better, gin a were doon i’ wun nain
place.” I was vext to my soul that my look had spoken so plainly as to
elicit this remark. Tell a man in a consumption that he looks
charmingly, and you have opened the sluices of his heart almost as
effectually, to your ingress, as if you had really cured him. And yet I
think this poor fellow said what he did, rather to please one which he
saw took an interest in him, than to flatter himself into a belief of
recovery, or from any such existing belief; for, shortly after, when I
asked him what he would do in Scotland, “A dunna ken wat a mun du,” he
replied; “a canna du ony labouring wark, an’ a ha na goten ony trade;
but, ye see, sir, we like ay to die whar’ wer’re born; and my faither,
an’ my gran’faither afore him forbye, a’ my ither kin, an’ the mither
that bore me, there a’ i’ the nook o’ ---- kirk-yaird; an’ than my wife
an twa bairnies:”--There was a pause in the soldier’s voice; he had not
learnt the drama of mendicity or sentimentality, but, by ----! there was
a tear in his eye.[78]--I hate a scene as much as Byron did, but I
admire a feeling heart, and pity a sorrowful one----the tear did not
fall. I looked in his face when I heard his voice again; his eye
glistened, and the lash was wet, but the tear was gone--And there stood
I, whose slender body scarcely comprehended one half of the
circumference of his muscular frame.--“And the hand of Death is here!”
said I; and then I turned my eyes upon myself, and almost wondered how
my soul dwelt in so frail a tenement, while his was about to escape from
such a seeming fastness of flesh.
After some further conversation, he told me his regiment had at one time
been ordered off for Africa against the Ashantees; and sure never mortal
man regretted counter orders on such grounds as he did those which
balked his expectations of a visit to Sierra Leone.--“A thought,” said
he, “wur regiment woud ha gien to Aifrica against the Aishantees--an a
was in hopes it wud--it’s a didly climate, an’ there was nae money goten
out o’ the laist fray; but thin--perhaps its jist as well to die in ae
place as anither--but than we canna bring wursels to feel it, tho’ we
may think it--an’ than ye see, sir, as a sid afore, a hae twa bairnies,
an gin a’d laid doon wi’ the rast, the mither o’ them might hae goten
the widow’s pension for them an’ hirsel.”--The widow’s pension! sixpence
a-day for a woman and two children--and death to the fourth person as
the only price of it! Hear this, shade of Lemprière! Manlius and the
Horatii died to save a country, and to purchase earthly immortality by
their deaths--but here’s a poor fellow willing to give up the ghost, by
sword, plague, pestilence or famine, to secure a wife and two children
two-pence each, per day!
Look to it, ye three-bottle beasts, or men--as the courtesy of a
cringing world calls you--look to it, when ye toast the next lordly
victor “with three times three!”--Shout ’till the roof rings, and then
think, amid the din of your compeers, of the _humble_ dead--of those who
walk _silently_ in the path of the grave, and of the widowed and
fatherless. Commanders die for glory, for a funeral procession, or a
title, or wealth for those they leave behind; but who speaks of the
private, who dies with a wound for every pore?--he rots on the earth;
or, with some scores or hundreds of his comrades, a few inches beneath
it; and his wife gets--“sixpence a day!”
Poor fellow, thought I, as I looked on my narrator--were I a king--but
kings cannot scrape acquaintance with every man in the ranks of their
forces--but had I been your officer, I _think_ you should not have
wanted your pension for the few days that are to shine on you in this
world; and, had you fallen, it should have gone hard with me, but your
wife and two children should have had their twopence each per day--and,
were I a man of fortune, I would be proud to keep the life in such a
heart, as long as God would permit--and so saying, or thinking--and
blinking away the dimness of humanity from my eye--I thrust my hand into
my pocket, and gave him Sixpence.--Reader! smile not; I am but a poor
harum scarum headed mortal--_’t was all I had_, “in possession,
expectancy, remainder, or reversion”--