_For the Table Book._
I love thee better at this hour, when rest
Is shadowing earth, than e’en the nightingale:
The loudness of thy song that in the morn
Rang over heaven, the day has softened down
To pensive music.
In the evening, the body relaxed by the toil of the day, disposes the
mind to quietness and contemplation. The eye, dimmed by close
application to books or business, languishes for the greenness of the
fields; the brain, clouded by the smoke and vapour of close rooms and
crowded streets, droops for the fragrance of fresh breezes, and sweet
smelling flowers.
Summer cometh,
The bee hummeth,
The grass springeth,
The bird singeth,
The flower groweth,
And man knoweth
The time is come
When he may rove
Thro’ vale and grove.
No longer dumb.
There he may hear sweet voices,
Borne softly on the gale;
There he may have rich choices
Of songs that never fail;
The lark, if he be cheerful,
Above his head shall tower;
And the nightingale, if fearful,
Shall soothe him from the bower.
* * * * *
If red his eye with study,
If pale with care his cheek,
To make them bright and ruddy,
The green hills let him seek.
The quiet that it needeth
His mind shall there obtain;
And relief from care, that feedeth
Alike on heart and brain.
Urged by this feeling, I rambled along the Old Kent Road, making my way
through the Saturnalian groups, collected by that mob-emancipating-time
Easter Monday; wearied with the dust, and the exclamations of the
multitude, I turned down the lane leading to the fields, near the place
wherein the fair of Peckham is held, and sought for quietness in their
greenness--and found it not. Instead of verdure, there were rows of
dwellings of “plain brown brick,” and a half-formed road, from whence
the feet of man and horse impregnated the air with stifling atoms of
vitrified dust. Proceeding over the Rye, up the lane at the side of
Forest-hill, I found the solitude I needed. The sun was just setting;
his parting glance came from between the branches of the trees, like the
mild light of a lover’s eye, from her long dark lashes, when she
receives the adieu of her beloved, and the promise of meeting on the
morrow. The air was cool and fitful, playing with the leaves, as not
caring to stir them; and as I strayed, the silence was broken by the
voice of a bird--it was the tit-lark. I recognised his beautiful “weet”
and “fe-er,” as he dropped from the poplar among the soft grass; and I
lingered near the wood, in the hope of hearing the nightingale--but he
had not arrived, or was disposed to quiet. Evening closed over me: the
hour came
When darker shades around us thrown
Give to thought a deeper tone.
Retracing my steps, I reached that field which stretches from the back
of the Rosemary-branch to the canal; darkness was veiling the earth, the
hum of the multitude was faintly audible; above it, high in the cool and
shadowy air, rose the voice of a sky-lark, who had soared to take a last
look at the fading day, singing his vespers. It was a sweeter lay than
his morning, or mid-day carol--more regular and less ardent--divested of
the fervour and fire of his noontide song--its hurried loudness and
shrill tones. The softness of the present melody suited the calm and
gentle hour. I listened on, and imagined it was a bird I had heard in
the autumn of last year: I recollected the lengthy and well-timed
music--the “cheer che-er,” “weet, weet, che-er”--“we-et, weet,
cheer”--“che-er”--“weet, weet”--“cheer, weet, weet.” I still think it to
have been the very bird of the former season. Since then he had seen
The greenness of the spring, and all its flowers;
The ruddiness of summer and its fruits;
And cool and sleeping streams, and shading bowers
The sombre brown of autumn, that best suits
His leisure hours, whose melancholy mind
Is calm’d with list’ning to the moaning wind,
And watching sick leaves take their silent way,
On viewless wings, to death and to decay.
He had survived them, and had evaded the hawk in the cloud, and the
snake in the grass. I felt an interest in this bird, for his lot had
been like mine. The ills of life--as baleful to man, as the bird of prey
and the invidious reptile to the weakest of the feathered race--had
assailed me, and yet I had escaped. The notes in the air grew softer and
fainter--I dimly perceived the flutter of descending wings--one short,
shrill cry finished the song--darkness covered the earth--and I again
sought human habitations, the abodes of carking cares, and heart-rending
jealousies.