The Luggie.
The Luggie.
That impulse which all beauty gives the soul
Is languaged as I sing. For fairer stream
Rolled never golden sand unto the sea,
Made sweeter music than the Luggie, gloom’d
By glens whose melody mingles with her own.
The uttered name my inmost being thrills,
A word beyond a charm; and if this lay
Could smoothly flow along and wind to the end
In natural manner, as the Luggie winds
Her tortuous waters, then the world would list
In sweet enthralment, swallowed up and lost,
As he who hears the music that beguiles.
For as the pilgrim on warm summer days
Pacing the dusty highway, when he sees
The limpid silver glide with liquid lapse
Between the emerald banks—with inward throe
Blesses the clear enticement and partakes,
(His hot face meeting its own counterpart
Shadowy, from an unvoyageable sky)
So would the people in these later days
Listen the singing of a country song,
A virelay of harmless homeliness;
These later days, when in most bookish rhymes,
Dear blessed Nature is forgot, and lost
Her simple unelaborate modesty.
And unto thee, my friend! thou prime of soul
’Mong men; I gladly bring my firstborn song!
Would it were worthier for thy noble sake,
True poet and true English gentleman!
Thy favours flattered me, thy praise inspired:
Thy utter kindness took my heart, and now
Thy love alleviates my slow decline.
Beneath an ash in beauty tender leaved,
And thro’ whose boughs the glimmering sunshine flow’d
In rare ethereal jasper, making cool
A chequered shadow in the dark-green grass,
I lay enchanted. At my head there bloomed
A hedge of sweet-brier, fragrant as the breath
Of maid belovëd when her cheek is laid
To yours in downy pressure, soft as sleep.
A bank of harebells, flowers unspeakable
For half-transparent azure, nodding, gleamed
As a faint zephyr, laden with perfume,
Kissed them to motion, gently, with no will.
Before me streams most dear unto my heart,
Sweet Luggie, sylvan Bothlin—fairer twain
Than ever sung themselves into the sea,
Lucid Ægean, gemmed with sacred isles—
Were rolled together in an emerald vale;
And into the severe bright noon, the smoke
In airy circles o’er the sycamores
Upcurled—a lonely little cloud of blue
Above the happy hamlet. Far away,
A gently-rising hill with umbrage clad,
Hazel and glossy birch and silver fir,
Met the keen sky. Oh, in that wood, I know,
The woodruff and the hyacinth are fair
In their own season; with the bilberry
Of dim and misty blue, to childhood dear.
Here, on a sunny August afternoon,
A vision stirred my spirit half-awake
To fling a purer lustre on those fields
That knew my boyish footsteps; and to sing
Thy pastoral beauty, Luggie, into fame.
Now, while the nights are long, by the dear hearth
Of home I write; and ere the mavis trills
His smooth notes from the budding boughs of March,
While the red windy morning o’er the east
Widens, or while the lowly sky of eve
Burns like a topaz;—all the dear design
May reach completion, married to my song
As far as words can syllable desire.
May yet the inspiration and delight
That proved my soul on that Autumnal day,
Be with me now, while o’er the naked earth
Hushfully falls the soft, white, windless snow!
Once more, O God, once more before I die,
Before blind darkness and the wormy grave
Contain me, and my memory fades away
Like a sweet-coloured evening, slowly sad—
Once more, O God, thy wonders take my soul.
A winter day! the feather-silent snow
Thickens the air with strange delight, and lays
A fairy carpet on the barren lea.
No sun, yet all around that inward light
Which is in purity,—a soft moonshine,
The silvery dimness of a happy dream.
How beautiful! afar on moorland ways,
Bosomed by mountains, darkened by huge glens,
(Where the lone altar raised by Druid hands
Stands like a mournful phantom), hidden clouds
Let fall soft beauty, till each green fir branch
Is plumed and tassel’d, till each heather stalk
Is delicately fringed. The sycamores,
Thro’ all their mystical entanglement
Of boughs, are draped with silver. All the green
Of sweet leaves playing with the subtle air
In dainty murmuring; the obstinate drone
Of limber bees that in the monkshood bells
House diligent; the imperishable glow
Of summer sunshine never more confessed
The harmony of nature, the divine
Diffusive spirit of the Beautiful.
Out in the snowy dimness, half revealed
Like ghosts in glimpsing moonshine, wildly run
The children in bewildering delight.
There is a living glory in the air—
A glory in the hush’d air, in the soul
A palpitating wonder hush’d in awe.
Softly—with delicate softness—as the light
Quickens in the undawned east; and silently—
With definite silence—as the stealing dawn
Dapples the floating clouds, slow fall, slow fall,
With indecisive motion eddying down,
The white-winged flakes—calm as the sleep of sound,
Dim as a dream. The silver-misted air
Shines with mild radiance, as when thro’ a cloud
Of semi-lucent vapour shines the moon.
I saw last evening (when the ruddy sun,
Enlarged and strange, sank low and visibly,
Spreading fierce orange o’er the west), a scene
Of winter in his milder mood. Green fields,
Which no kine cropped, lay damp; and naked trees
Threw skeleton shadows. Hedges thickly grown,
Twined into compact firmness with no leaves,
Trembled in jewelled fretwork as the sun
To lustre touched the tremulous waterdrops.
Alone, nor whistling as his fellows do
In fabling poem and provincial song,
The ploughboy shouted to his reeking team;
And at the clamour, from a neighbouring field
Arose, with whirr of wings, a flock of rooks
More clamorous; and thro’ the frosted air,
Blown wildly here and there without a law,
They flew, low-grumbling out loquacious croaks.
Red sunset brightened all things; streams ran red
Yet coldly; and before the unwholesome east,
Searching the bones and breathing ice, blew down
The hill with a dry whistle, by the fire
In chamber twilight rested I at home.
But now what revelation of fair change,
O Giver of the seasons and the days!
Creator of all elements, pale mists,
Invisible great winds and exact frost!
How shall I speak the wonder of thy snow?
What though we know its essence and its birth,
Can quick expound in philosophic wise,
The how, and whence, and manner of its fall;
Yet, oh, the inner beauty and the life—
The life that is in snow! The virgin-soft
And utter purity of the down-flake
Falling upon its fellow with no sound!
Unblown by vulgar winds, innumerous flakes
Fall gently, with the gentleness of love!
Between its spotless-clothëd banks, in clear
Pellucid luculence, the Luggie seems
Charmed in its course, and with deceptive calm
Flows mazily in unapparent lapse,
A liquid silence. Every field is robed,
And in the furrow lies the plough unused.
The earth is cherished, for beneath the soft
Pure uniformity, is gently born
Warmth and rich mildness fitting the dead roots
For the resuscitation of the spring.
Now while I write, the wonder clothes the vale,
Calmed every wind and loaded every grove;
And looking thro’ the implicated boughs
I see a gleaming radiance. Sparkling snow
Refined by morning-footed frost so still
Mantles each bough; and such a windless hush
Breathes thro’ the air, it seems the fairy glen
About some phantom palace, pale abode
Of fabled _Sleeping Beauty_. Songless birds
Flit restlessly about the breathless wood,
Waiting the sudden breaking of the charm;
And as they quickly spring on nimble wing
From the white twig, a sparkling shower falls
Starlike. It is not whiteness, but a clear
Outshining of all purity, which takes
The winking eyes with such a silvery gleam.
No sunshine, and the sky is all one cloud.
The vale seems lonely, ghostlike; while aloud
The housewife’s voice is heard with doubled sound.
I have not words to speak the perfect show;
The ravishment of beauty; the delight
Of silent purity; the sanctity
Of inspiration which o’erflows the world,
Making it breathless with divinity.
God makes His angels spirits—that is, winds—
His ministers a flaming fire. So, heart!
(Weak heart that fainted in thy loneliness)
In the sweet breezes spirits are alive;
God’s angels guide the thunder-clouds; and God
Speaks in the thunder truly. All around
Is loving and continuous deity;
His mercy over all His works remains.
And surely in the glossy snow there shines
Angelic influence—a ministry
Devout and heavenly, that with benign
Action, amid a wondrous hush lets fall
The dazzling garment on the fostered fields.
So thus with fair delapsion softly falls
The sacred shower; and when the shortened day
Dejected dies in the low streaky west,
The rimy moon displays a cold blue night,
And keen as steel the east wind sprinkles ice.
Thicker than bees, about the waxing moon
Gather the punctual stars. Huge whitened hills
Rise glimmering to the blue verge of the night,
Ghostlike, and striped with narrow glens of firs
Black-waving, solemn. O’er the Luggie stream
Gathers a veiny film of ice, and creeps
With elfin feet around each stone and reed,
Working fine masonry; while o’er the dam
Dashing, a noise of waters fills the clear
And nitrous air. All the dark wintry hours
Sharply the winds from the white level moors
Keen whistle. Timorous in homely bed
The schoolboy listens, fearful lest gaunt wolves
Or beasts, whose uncouth forms in ancient books
He has beheld, at creaking shutters pull
Howling. And when at last the languid dawn
In windy redness re-illumes the east
With ineffectual fire, an intense blue
Severely vivid o’er the snowy hills
Gleams chill, while hazy half-transparent clouds
Slow-range the freezing ether of the west.
Along the woods the keenly vehement blasts
Wail, and disrobe the mantled boughs, and fling
A snow-dust everywhere. Thus wears the day:
While grandfather over the well-watched fire
Hangs cowering, with a cold drop at his nose.
Now underneath the ice the Luggie growls,
And to the polished smoothness curlers come
Rudely ambitious. Then for happy hours
The clinking stones are slid from wary hands,
And _Barleycorn_, best wine for surly airs,
Bites i’ th’ mouth, and ancient jokes are crack’d.
And oh, the journey homeward, when the sun,
Low-rounding to the west, in ruddy glow
Sinks large, and all the amber-skirted clouds,
His flaming retinue, with dark’ning glow
Diverge! The broom is brandished as the sign
Of conquest, and impetuously they boast
Of how this shot was played—with what a bend
Peculiar—the perfection of all art—
That stone came rolling grandly to the _Tee_
With victory crown’d, and flinging wide the rest
In lordly crash! Within the village inn,
What time the stars are sown in ether keen,
Clear and acute with brightness; and the moon
Sharpens her semicircle; and the air
With bleakly shivering sough cuts like a scythe,
They by the roaring chimney sit, and quaff
The beaded ‘_Usqueba_’ with sugar dash’d.
Oh, when the precious liquid fires the brain
To joy, and every heart beats fast with mirth
And ancient fellowship, what nervy grasps
Of horny hands o’er tables of rough oak!
What singing of _Lang Syne_ till teardrops shine
And friendships brighten as the evening wanes!
Now the dead earth, wrapt solemnly, expects
The punctual resurrection of the Spring.
Shackled and bound, the coldly vigilant frost
Stiffens all rivers, and with eager power
Hardens each glebe. The wasted country owns
The keen despotic vehemence of the North;
And, with the resignation that obtains
Where he is weak and powerless, man awaits,
Under God’s mercy, the dissolvent thaw.
O All-beholding, All-informing God
Invisible, and ONLY through effects
Known and belov’d, unshackle the waste earth!
Soul of the incomplete vitality
In atom and in man! Soul of all Worlds!
Leave not Thy glory vacant, nor afflict
With fear and hunger man whom Thou hast made.
Thou from Thy chambers waterest the earth;
Thou givest snow like wool; and scatterest wide
Hoarfrost like ashes. Casting forth Thy ice
Like morsels, who can stand before Thy cold?
Thou sendest forth Thy word, and lo! they melt;
Causing Thy wind to blow, the waters flow.[A]
Soon the frozen air receives the subtle thaw:
And suddenly a crawling mist, with rain
Impregn’d, the damp day dims, and drizzling drops
Proclaim a change. At night across the heavens
Swift-journeying, and by a furious wind
Squadron’d, the hurrying clouds range the roused sky,
Magnificently sombrous. The wan moon,
Amazed, gleams often through a cloudy rack,
Then, shuddering, hides. One earnest wakeful star
Of living sapphire drooping by her side,
A faithful spirit in her lone despair,
Outshines the cloudy tempest. Then the shower
Falls ceaseless, and night murmurs with the rain.
And in the sounding morning what a change!
The meadows shine new-washed; while here and there
A dusky patch of snow in shelter’d paths
Melts lonely. The awakened forest waves
With boughs unplumed. The white investiture
Of the fair earth hath vanished, and the hills
That in the evening sunset glowed with rose
And ineffectual baptism of gold,
Shine tawdry, crawled upon by the blind rain.
Now Luggie thunders down the ringing vale,
Tawnily brown, wide-leaving yellow sand
Upon the meadow. The South-West, aroused,
Blustering in moody kindness, clears the sky
To its blue depths by a full-wingëd wind,
Blowing the diapason of red March.
Blow high and cleanse the sky, O South-West wind!
Roll the full clouds obedient; overthrow
White crags of vapour in confusion piled
Precipitate, high-toppling, undissolved;
And while with silent workings they are spread
And scattered, broken into ruinous pomp
By Thy invisible influence, what calm
And sweet disclosure of the upper deep
Cerulean, the atmospheric sea!
Blow high and sift the earth, thou South-West wind!
Now the dull air grows rarer, and no more
The stark day thickens towards evenfall;
Nor from the solid cloud-gloom drips the rain:
But in a sunset mild and beautiful
The day sinks, till in clear dilucid air,
As in a chamber newly decorate,
The golden Phœbe reddens with the wind.
No more through hoary mists and low-hung clouds
The eternal hills—bones of the earth—upheave
Their deity for worship: but severe
Against the clear sky outlined, each sharp crag
Uplifts its scarred magnificence to Heaven.
From breezy ledge the eagle springs aloft,
And, beating boldly up against the wind
With inconceivable velocity,
Stretches to upper ether, and renews
Haughty communion with the regal sun!
Blow high, O deep-mouth’d wind from the South-West!
And in the caves and hollows of the rocks
Moan mournfully, for desolation reigns.
Through the unknown abysses and foul chasms,
Sacred to horror and eternal damps
And darkness ever-cumbent, blindly howl
Till the hoarse dragons, wailing in their woe
Infernal, answer from accursed dens.
Pleasant to him who long in sick-room pent,
Surveying still the same unchanging hills
Belted with vapour, muffled up in cloud;
The same raw landscape soaked in ceaseless rain;
Pleasant to him the invigorating wind.
Roused from reclusive thought by the deep sound
And motion of the forest (as a steed
When shrills the silver trumpet of the onset),
He rushes to communion with old forms.
Like a fair picture suddenly uncovered
To an impatient artist, the fair earth,
Touched with the primal glory of the Spring,
Flings an indefinite glamour on his soul.
With indistinct commotion he perceives
All things, and his delight is indistinct.
Earth’s forms and ever-living beauty strike
Amazement through his spirit, till he feels
As one new-born to being undeflowered.
The sudden music from the budding woods,
The lark in air, startles and overjoys.
O Laverock! (for thy Scottish name to me
Sounds sweetest) with unutterable love
I love thee, for each morning as I lie
Relaxed and weary with my long disease,
One from low grass arises visibly
And sings as if it sang for me alone.
Among a thousand I could tell the tones
Of this, my little sweet hierophant!
To fainting heart and the despairing soul
What is more soothing than the natural voice
Of birds? One Candlemas, many years ago,
When weak with pain and sickness, it infused
Into my soul a bliss delectable.
For suddenly into the misty air
A mellow, smooth and liquid music, clear
As silver, softer than an organ stop
Ere the bass grumbles, rose. The blunted winds,
No longer edged severely with keen frost,
Forgot to whisper, and a summer-calm
Pervaded soul and sense. No violet
As yet breathed perfume; from the darkling sward
No snowdrop boldly peeped; and even the ash,
Whence flowed the sound, unfolded not her buds
To blacken while the embryo gathered green.
And yet this hardy herald of the Spring
Chaunted rich harmony, daintily carved out
Her voice, and through her sleek throat sobb’d her soul
In a delicious tremble. As she tuned
Her pliant song, slow from the closing sky
The sacred snow fell calm. Yet through the shower,
Hushing all nature into silence, clear
The _Feltie-flier_[B] trilled her slippery close
In panting rapture, from the whitening ash.
I stood all wonder; and to this late hour
Remember the dear song with ravishment;
Nor ever comes a merry Candlemas day
But I am out to hear. And if perchance
Some warbler sprinkle on the vacant air
Its homeless notes, the bird seems to my heart
The individual bird of comely grey
That sang her pliant strain through falling snow.
Now, when the crumbling glebe is by the wind
Unbound, and snows adown the mountains hoar
Glide liquid, from the furrow loose the plough.
Enyoke the willing horses, and upturn
With deep-pressed share the saponaceous loam.
From morn to even with progression slow
The ploughboy cuts his awkward parallels,
And soberly imbrowns the decent fields.
It was a hazy February day
Ten years ago, when I, a boy of ten,
Beheld a country ploughing-match. The morn
Lighted the east with a dim smoky flare
Of leaden purple, as the rumbling wains
Each with a plough light-laden (while behind
Trotted a horse sleek-comb’d and tail bedight
With many coloured ribbons) by our home
Went downwards to the rich fat meadow-grounds
Bounding the Luggie. Many a herd of beeves
Dew-lapp’d had fattened there, and headlong oft
O’er the hoof-clattering turf they wildly ran,
Lashing with swinging tail the thirsty flies.
But now the smooth expanse of level green
Was quickly to be changed to sober brown;
And twenty ploughs by twenty ploughmen held
To cut with shining share the living turf.
Oh many a wintry hour, thro’ wind and rain,
In valleys gloom’d, or by the bleak hill-side
Lonely, these twenty had themselves inured
And stubborn’d to perfection. Many a touch
And word of honest kindness had been used
To the dear faithful horses _snooving_ on
In quiet patience, jutting noble chests.
Now the big day, expected long, was come:
And, with proud shoulders yoked, conscious they stood
Patient and unrefusing; while behind,
All ready stripped, brown brawny arms displayed—
Arms sinewed by long labour—eager swains
O’er-leaning slight, with cautious wary hold
The plough detain. At the commencing sign
A simultaneous noise discordant tears
The air thick-closing to a hazy damp.
Sudden the horses move, and the clear yokes,
Well polished, clatter. With an artful bend
The gleaming coulter takes the grass and cuts
The greenly tedded blades with nibbling noise
Almost unheard. The smooth share follows fast;
And from its shining slope the clayey glebe
In neat and neighbouring furrows sidelong falls.
Thus till the dank, raw-cold, and unpurged day
Gathering its rheumy humours threatens rain;
And the bleak night steals up the forlorn east.
And when the careful verdict is preferr’d
By the wise judge (a gray-hair’d husbandman,
Himself in his fresh youth a ploughboy keen),
Some bosoms fire exultant. Others, slow
Their reeking horses harnessed, lag along
Heart-sad and weary; and the rumbling noise
Of homeward-going carts for miles away
Is heard, till night brings silence and repose.
But never with sad motions of the soul,
Despairing, yoked his sleek and smoking team
For homeward journey my belovëd friend!
He the great prize, the guinea all of gold,
Gained thrice and grew a very famous man;
Till Death, the churl accurs’d, him in his prime
Bore to the border-land of wonder. Then
I felt the blank in life when dies a friend.
Inexplicable emptiness and want
Unsatisfied! The unrepealable law
Consumed the living while the dead decayed.
No more, no more thro’ glorious nights of May
We wander, chasing pleasure as of old.
First night of May! and the soft-silvered moon
Brightens her semicircle in the blue;
And ’mid the tawny orange of the west
Shines the full star that ushers in the even!
On the low meadows by the Luggie-side
Gathers a semi-lucent mist, and creeps
In busy silence, shrouding golden furze
And leafy copsewood. Thro’ the tortuous dell
Like an eternal sound the Luggie flows
In unreposing melody. And here,
Three perfect summers gone, my dear first friend
Was with me; and we swore a sudden oath,
To travel half-a-dozen miles and court
Two sisters, whose sweet faces sunshine kissed
To berry brown and country comeliness—
Kiss-worthier than the love of Solomon.
So singing clearly with a merry heart
Old songs—_It was upon a Lammas nicht_;
And that sweet thing by gentle Tannahill,
Married to music sweeter than itself;
_The Lowland Lassie_—thro’ dew-silvered fields
We hastened ’mid the mist our footsteps raised
Until we reached the moorland. From its bed
Among the purplish heather whirring rose
The plover, wildly screaming; and from glens
Of moaning firs the pheasant’s piercing shriek
Discordant sounded. Then, ’mong elder trees
Throwing antique fat shadows, soon we saw
The window panes, moon-whitened; and low heard
Bawtie, the shaggie collie, grumble out
His disapproval in a sullen growl.
But slyly wearing nearer, cried my friend,
“Whisht, Bawtie! Bawtie!” and the fellow came
Whining, and laid a wet nose in his palm
Obedient, while I tinkled on the panes
A fairy summons to the souls within.
The door creaked musically, and a face
Peeped smiling, till I whispered, “Open, Kate!”
And thro’ the moonshine came the low sweet quest—
“Oh! is it you?” My answer was a kiss.
Then entering the kitchen paved with stone,
We kicked the sparkling faggot till it blazed;
And sitting round it, many a tale of love
Was told, until the chrysolite of dawn
Burned in the east, and from the mountain rolled
The sarcenet mists far-flaming with the morn.
This was my first of May three years ago:
Now in a churchyard by the Bothlin side—
_The Auld Aisle_—moulders my first friend, and keeps
An early tryste with God, the All in All.
We sat at school together on one seat,
Came home together thro’ the lanes, and knew
The dunnock’s nest together in the hedge,
With smooth blue eggs in cosy brightness warm.
And as two youngling kine on cold Spring nights
Lie close together on the bleak hill-side
For mutual heat, so when a trouble came
We crept to one another, growing still
True friends in interchange of heart and soul.
But suddenly death changed his countenance,
And grav’d him in the darkness far from me.
O Friendship, prelibation of divine
Enjoyment, union exquisite of soul,
How many blessings do I owe to thee,
How much of incommunicable woe!
The daisies bloom among the tall green blades
Upon his grave, and listening you may hear
The Bothlin make sweet music as she flows;
And you may see the poplars by her brink
Twinkle their silvery leaflets in the sun.
O little wandering preacher, Bothlin brook!
Wind musically by his lonely grave.
O well-known face, for ever lost! and voice,
For ever silent! I have heard thee sing
In village inns what time the silver frost
Curtained the panes in silent ministry,
Sing old Scotch ballads full of love and woe,
While the assimilative snow fell white and calm
With ceaseless lapse. And I have seen thee dance
Wild galliards with the buxom lasses, far
In lone farm-houses set on whistling hills,
While the storm thickened into thunder-cloud.
Dear mentor in all rustic merriment,
Ever as hearty as the night was long!
I miss thee often, as I do to-night,
And my heart fills; and thy belovëd songs
The music and the words ring in my ears,
_Then Lowland lassie wilt thou go_—until
My eyes are full of tears, dear heart! dear heart!
And I could pass the perilous edge of death
To see thy dear, clear face, and hear again
The old wild music as of old, of old.
But as the Luggie with a plaintive song
Twists thro’ a glen of greenest gloom, and gropes
For open sunshine; and, the shadows past,
Glides quicker-footed thro’ divided meads
With sliding purl, so from that tale of gloom
My song with happier motions seeks the calm
And quiet smoothness of a silver end.
From orient valleys where as lucent dew
As ever jewelled Hermon, falls and shines
Fulfilled by sunrise; where slant arrow-showers
Of golden beams make every twinkling drop
A diamond, and every blade of grass
A glory;—comes the earth-born wanderer
Sweet Luggie, singing. Over the mill-dam
Sounding, a cataract in miniature,
White-robed it dashes thro’ unceasing mist.
Thro’ ivied bridge, adown its rocky bed
Shadowed by wavy limes whose branches bend
Kissing the wave to ripples, on it purls
Abrupt, capricious, past the hazel bower
Where marriageable maid is being woo’d;
And as on sward of velvet by her side
Her lover low reclines, while his dear tongue
Voices warm passion—she confiding lays
All her mild beauty in his manly breast
Blushing. Ah, Luggie! sure you murmur now
Clearly and dearly o’er thy pumy stones!
And when amid a pause of thought they hear
Thy babblement of music, never a shade
Darkens their souls. Thy song is happiness,
A revelation of sweet sympathies
By them interpreted; for never yet
Was Nature sullen when the spirit shone.
This is in twilight, when that only star
White Hesperus from chastest azure grows;
And as night trails her thousand shadows slow
Over the spinning world, the streamlet sings
Her mother earth asleep. O Autumn nights!
When skies are deeply blue, and the full moon
Soars in voluptuous whiteness, Juno-like,
A passionate splendour; when in the great south
Orion like a frozen skeleton
Hints of his ancient hugeness and mail’d strength;
And Cassiopeia glimmers cold and clear
Upon her throne of seven diamonds!
In the thick-foliaged brake, the nightingale
Of Scotland, chirping stonechacker, prolongs
With _whit, whit, chirr-r_ the day’s full melody.
Far-sounding thro’ blue silence and smooth air,
The drumming noise of the hoarse waterfall
Is heard unheeded all by homely fires,
And heard unheeded all in hazel bower
Where love wings hours of serene joy; and still
As roams with _eerie_ wail the unbodied wind
Thro’ ghostly glen of pine, the maiden clings
More closely, till two firm entwining arms
Press comfort; and there is a touch of lips.
Now in this season—ere the flickering leaves,
Touch’d with October’s fiery alchemy,
Grow sere and crisp—is shorn the meadow-hay.
Mingled with spiral orchis, dim blue-bell
Of delicatest azure, crowfoot smooth,
And ox-eye flaunting with faint flowers wild,
Nameless to me—the fragrant rye-grass grew.
Now with a measured sweep the keen-edged scythe
Cuts all to wither in the imbrowning sun.
Two golden days o’erpast (with eves of cloud
Magnificently coloured, heaped and strewn
Confusedly) the country lasses come
Bare-armed, bare-ancled; and ’mid honest mirth
And homely jests with tinkling laughter winged,
Gather the fading balm. With kindling eyes,
And all the life of maidenhood aflame
In little tremulous pants,—they carry light
The warm load to the stack.
Oh, many a time
The old man, building slow the rising stack,
Saw and reproved not our wild merriment:
Remembering, half-sad, his own fresh youth
When beauty was a magic to the soul
And a fair face a charm; when a lip-touch
Was necromancy; and the perfect life
A wondrous yearning after womanhood.
But at the breathless nerve-dissolving noon,
When hot the undiminished sun downthrows
Direct his beams, they from the field retire
To cool consoling grove, or haply seek
The drowsy pool by beechen shadow chilled,
To lave the limbs relaxed. With eager leap,
Headlong they plunge from the enamelled bank
Into the liquid cold, and slowly move
With measured strokes and palms outspread; while oft,
When the clear water rises o’er the lip
Dallying, they uptilt the swelling chest
In unspent vigour.
Oh, the pleasant time!
Pleasant beneath embowering trees, when day
Hides with her silken mists the distant scene
And breathes afar a nerve-dissolving steam—
Pleasant in sweet consolatory shade
To wander pensive. Then the soul serenes
The turbulent passions, and in devout trance,
Unconscious of celestial power, reveals
The God reflected in fair natural forms.
For as the Sun disdains the vulgar gaze
In his uplifted sphere, yet in the broad
Grey Ocean shews a softer face, so God
In nature shines. Oh, sweet the bowery path
Of fair Glenconner, where in volant youth
I saw the heroes of divine Romance.
No pathway winding through fresh orange groves,
Leading to white Campanian city, set
Inviolably by the sapphire sea,
Can fair Glenconner’s umbrage-shadowed way
Excel. The bird-embowering beechen boughs,
Kissing each other, on the dusty way
Throw trembling shadows; and when warm west winds
Roam hither in voluptuous unconcern,
There is a music and a fragrancy
Upon Glenconner, like the music hymned
By quires angelic on cerulean floors.
Deem not I speak in vanity, or speak
In false hyperbole, as poets do
When languaging in love the radiance
Of maids; but there is beauty and delight
And passive feeling sweeter than all sense,
To him who walks beneath the boughs, and hears
The humming music like the sound of seas.
There have I dreamed for hours—and gathered there
The homely inspiration which fulfils
The yearning of my soul. There have I felt
The unconfined divinity which lies
In beauty; and when the eternal stars
Have twinkled silver thro’ illumined leaves,
I could not choose but worship.
O fair eves
Of undescribable sweetness long ago!
When gloaming caught me musing unawares,
Musing alone beneath the whispering leaves
That overshade Glenconner. Hour of calm
Suggestive thought, when, like a robe, the earth
Puts on a shadowy pensiveness, and stills
The music of her motions multiform.
Day lingered in the west; and thro’ a sky
Of thinly-waning orange, sullen clouds
Of amethyst, with flamy purple edged,
Moved evenly in sluggish pilotage.
The windless shades of quiet eventide
Slow gathered, and the sweet concordant tones
Of melody within the leafy brake
Died clearly, till the Mavis piped alone;
Then softly from the jasper sky, a star
Drew radiant silver, brightening as the west
Darkened. But ere the semicircled moon
Shed her white light adown the lucent air,
The Mavis ceased, and thro’ the thin gloom brake
The Corncraik’s curious cry, the sylvan voice
Of the shy bird that haunts the bladed corn;
And suddenly, yet silently, the blue
Deepened, until innumerous white stars
Thro’ crystal smooth and yielding ether drooped,
Not coldly, but in passionate June glow.
The Corncraik now, ’mong tall green bladed corn
Breasted her eggs with feathers dew-besprent,
And stayed her human cry. The silence left
A gap within the soul, a sudden grief,
An emptiness in the low sighing air.
Then swooning through full night, the summer’d earth
Bosom’d her children into tender rest;
Now delicately chambered ladies breathe
Their souls asleep in white-limb’d luxury.
O Virgins purest lipped! with snowy lids
Soft closed on living eyes! O unkissed cheeks,
Half-sunk in pillowy pressure, and round arms
In the sweet pettishness of silver dreams
Flung warm into the cold unheeding air!
Sleep! soft bedewer of infantine eyes,
Pouter of rosy little lips! plump hands
Are doubled into deeply-dimpled fists
And stretched in rosy langour, curls are laid
In fragrance on the rounded baby-face,
Kiss-worthy darling! Stiller of clear tongues
And silvery laughter! Now the musical noise
Of little feet is silent, and blue shoes
No more come pattering from the nursery door.
Death is not of thee, Sleep! Thy calm domain
Is tempered with a dreamy bliss, and dimmed
With haunted glooms, and richly sanctified
With the fine elements of Paradise.
Burn in the gleaming sky, ye far-off Stars!
And thou, O inoffensive Crescent! lift
The wonder of thy softness, the white shell
Of thy clear beauty, till the wholesome dawn
Wither thy brightness pale, and borrowed pride!
But sleep supine, on indolent afternoon
Ere the winds wake, and holy mountain airs
Descend, is sweet. Oh, let the bard describe
The sacred spot where, underneath the round
Green odoriferous sycamore, he lay
Sleepless, yet half-asleep, in that one mood
When the quick sense is duped, and angel wings
Make spiritual music. Sweet and dim
The sacred spot, belovëd not alone
For its own beauty: but the memories,
The pictures of the past which in the mind
Arise in fair profusion, each distinct
With the soft hue of some peculiar mood,
Enchant to living lustre what before
Was to the untaught vision simply fair.
In a fair valley, carpeted with turf
Elastic, sloping upwards from the stream,
A rounded sycamore in honied leaves
Most plenteous, murmurous with humming bees,
Shadows a well. Darkly the crystal wave
Gleams cold, secluded; on its polished breast
Imaging twining boughs. No pitcher breaks
Its natural sleep, except at morn and eve
When my good mother thro’ the dewy grass
Walks patient with her vessels, bringing home
The clear refreshment. Every blowing Spring,
A snowdrop, with pure streaks of delicate green
Upon its inmost leaves, from withered grass
Springs whitely, and within its limpid breast
Is mirror’d whitely. Not a finger plucks
This hidden beauty; but it blooms and dies,
In lonely lustre blooms and lonely dies—
Unknown, unloved, save by one simple heart
Poetic, the creator of this song.
And after this frail luxury hath given
Its little life in keeping to the soul
Of all the worlds, a robin builds its nest
In lowly cleft, a foot or so above
The water. His dried leaves, and moss, and grass
He hither carries, lining all with hair
For softness. I have laid the hand that writes
These rhymes belovëd, on the crimson breast,
Sleek-soft, that panted o’er the five unborn;
While, leaf-hid, o’er me sang the watchful mate
Plaintive, and with a sorrow in the song,
In silvan nook where anchoret might dwell
Contented. Often on September days,
When woods were efflorescent, and the fields
Refulgent with the bounty of the corn,
And warming sunshine filled the breathless air
With a pale steam,—in heart-confused mood
Have I worn holidays enraptured there;
For, O dear God! there is a pure delight
In dreaming: in those mental-weary times,
When the vext spirit finds a false content
In fashioning delusions. Oh, to lie
Supinely stretched upon the shaded turf,
Beholding thro’ the openings of green leaves
White clouds in silence navigating slow
Cerulean seas illimitable! Hushed
The drowsy noon, and, with a stilly sound
Like harmony of thought, the Luggie frets—
Its bubbling mellowed to a musical hum
By distance. Then the influences faint,
Those visionary impulses that swell
The soul to inspiration, crowding come
Mysterious: and phantom memory
(Ghost of dead feeling) haunts the undissolved,
The unsubvertive temple of the soul!
But as thro’ loamy meadows lipping slow
Eats the fern-fringëd Luggie; and in spray
Leaps the mill-dam, and o’er the rocky flats
Spreads in black eddies; so my firstborn song
Hastes to the end in heedless vagrancy.
O ravishingly sweet the clacking noise
Of looms that murmur in our quiet dell!
No fairer valley Dyer ever dreamed—
Dyer, best river-singer, bard among
Ten thousand. Reader, hasten ye and come,
And see the Luggie wind her liquid stream
Thro’ copsy villages and spiry towns;
And see the Bothlin trotting swift of foot
From glades of alder, eager to combine
Her dimpling harmony with Luggie’s calm
Clear music, like the music of the soul.
But where you see the meeting, reader, stay,
O stay and hear the music of the looms.
Thro’ homely rustic bridge with ivy shagged
(Which you shall see if ever you do come
A summer pilgrim to our valley fair),
The Luggie flows with bells of foam-like stars
About its surface. A smooth bleaching-green
Spreads its soft carpet to the open doors
Of simple houses, shining-white. Blue smoke
Curls thro’ the breathing air to the tree-tops
Thin spreading, and is lost. A humming noise
Industrious is heard, the clack of looms,
Whereon sit maidens, homely fair, and full
Of household simpleness, who sing and weave,
And sing and weave thro’ all the easy hours,
Each day to-morrow’s counterpart, and smooth
Memory the mirror wherein golden Hope,
Contented, sees herself. Here dwell an old
Couple whose lives have known twice forty years
(My mother’s parents), their sage spirits touched
With blest anticipation of a home
Celestial bright, wherein they may fulfil
The life which death discovers. Last winter night
I, an accustomed visitant, beheld
The dear old pair. He in an easy chair
Lay dozing, while beside her noiseless wheel
She sat, her brow into her lap declined,
And half asleep! Sure sign, my mother said,
Of the conclusion of mortality.
A boy of ten, their grandson, on the floor
Lay stretched in early slumber; all the three
Unconscious of my entrance. A strange sight,
Fraught with strange lessons for the human soul.
In the first portion of her married life,
This woman, now, alas! so weary, old,
Bore daughters five; of well-beloved sons
An equal number. Some of them died young,
But six are yet alive, and dwelling all
Within a mile of her own house. The flower,
The idol of the mother, and her pride,
Dear magnet of all hopes, embodiment
Of heavenly blessings, was the youngest son,
Youngest of all. Me often has she told
How not a man could fling the stone with him;
That in his shoes he outran racers fleet
Barefooted; dancing on the shaven green
On summer holidays and autumn eves
(As to this day they do) his laugh was clearest,
Lightest his step; and he could thrill the hearts
Of simple women by a natural grace,
And perilous recital of love tales.
I cannot tell by what mysterious means,
Day-dream, or silver vision of the night,
Or sacred show of reason, picturing
A smooth ambition and calm happiness
For years of weaker age—but suddenly
In prime of life there flowered in his soul
An inextinguishable love to be
A minister of God. When holy schemes
Govern the motions of the spirit, ways
Are found to compass them. With wary care,
Frugality praiseworthy, and the strength
Of two strong arms, he in the summer months
Hoarded a competence equivalent
To all demands, until the session’s end.
Whate’er by manual labour he had gained
Thro’ the clear summer months in verdant fields,
With brooks of silver laced, and cool’d with winds,
Was spent in winter in the smoky town.
But when, his annual course of study past,
He with his presence blessed his father’s house,
With what a sacred sanctity of hope
Eager his mother dreamed, or garrulous
Spake of him everywhere—his foreign ways,
And midnight porings o’er _uncanny_ books.
His father, with a stern delight suffused,
Grew a proud man of some importance now
In his own eyes; for who in all the vale
Had e’er a son so noble and so learned,
So worthy as his own?
So time wore on: but when three years complete
Had perfected their separate destinies,
A change stole o’er the current of their lives,
As a cloud-shadow glooms the crystal stream.
Their son came home, but with his coming came
Sorrow. A hue too beautifully fair
Brighten’d his cheek, as sunlight tints a cloud.
His face had caught a trick of joy more sad
Than visible grief; and all the subtle frame
Of human life, so wonderfully wrought,
A mystery of mechanism, was wearing
In sore uneasy manner to the grave.
What need to tell what every heart must know
In sympathy prophetical? Long time,
A varied year in seasons four complete
(For the white snowdrop o’er my mother’s well
Twice oped its whitest leaves among the green),
He lay consuming. It must needs have been
A weary trial to the thinking soul,
Thus with a consciousness of coming death,
The grim Attenuation! evermore
Nearing insatiate. At her spinning-wheel
His mother sat; and when his voice grew faint,
A simple whistle by his pillow lay,
And at its sound she entered patient, sad,
Her soothing love to minister, her hope
To nourish to its fading. But his breath
Grew weaker ever; and his dry pale lips
Closing upon the little instrument,
Could not produce a faintly audible note!
A little bell, the plaything of a child,
Now at his bedside hung, and its clear tones
Tinkled the weary summons. Thus his time
Narrowed to a completion, and his soul,
Immortal in its nature, thro’ his eyes
Yearning, beheld the majesty of Him
Great in His mystery of godliness,
Fulfiller of the dim Apocalypse!
Twelve years have passed since then, and he is now
A happy memory in the hearts of those
Who knew him; for to know him was to love.
And oft I deem it better, as the fates,
Or God, whose will is fate, have proven it;
For had he lived and fallen (as who of us
Doth perfectly? and let him that is proud
Take heed lest he do fall) he would have been
A sadness to them in their aged hours.
But now he is an honour and delight;
A treasure of the memory; a joy
Unutterable: by the lone fireside
They never tire to speak his praise, and say
How, if he had been spared, he would have been
So great, and good, and noble as (they say)
The country knows; although I know full well
That not a man in all the parish round
Speaks of him ever; he is now forgot,
And this his natal valley knows him not.—
And this his natal valley knows him not?
The well-belovëd, nothing?—the fair face
And pliant limbs, poor indistinctive dust?
The body, blood, and network of the brain
Crumbled as a clod crumbles! Is this all?
A turf, a date, an epitaph, and then
Oblivion, and profound nonentity!
And thus his natal valley knows him not.
Trees murmur to the passing wind, streams flow,
Flowers shine with dewdrops in the shady glens,
All unintelligent creation smiles
In loving-kindness; but, like a light dream
Of morning, man arises in fair show,
Like the hued rainbow from incumbent gloom
Elicited, he shines against the sun—
A momentary glory. Not a voice
Remains to whisper of his whereabouts:
The palpable body in its mother’s breast
Dissolves, and every feature of the face
Is lost in feculent changes. O black earth!
Wrap from bare eyes the slow decaying form,
The beauty rotting from the living hair,
The body made incapable thro’ sin
God’s Spirit to contain. Earth, wrap it close
Till the heavens vibrate to the trump of doom!
This is not all: for the invisible soul
Betrays the soft desire, the quenchless wish,
To live a purer life, more proximate
To the prime Fountain of all life. The power
Of vivid fancy and the boundless scenes
(High coloured with the colouring of Heaven),
Creations of imagination, tell
The mortal yearnings of immortal souls!
Now, while around me in blind labour winds
Howl, and the rain-drops lash the streaming pane;
Now, while the pine-glen on the mountain side
Roars in its wrestling with the sightless foe,
And the black tarn grows hoary with the storm;—
Amid the external elemental war,
My soul with calm comportment—more becalmed
By the wild tempest furious without—
Sits in her sacred cell, and ruminates
On Death, severe discloser of new life.
When the well-known and once embraceable form
Is but a handful of white dust, the soul
Grows in divine dilation, nearer God.
Therefore grieve not, my heart, that unsustained
His memory died among us, that no more,
While yet the grass is hoary and the dawn
Lingers, he shyly thro’ untrodden fields
Brushes his early path: that he no more
Beneath the beech, in lassitude outstretched,
Ponders the holy strains of Israel’s King;
For in translated glory, and new clothed
With Incorruptible, he purer air
Breathes in a fairer valley. There no storm
Maddens as now; no flux, and no opaque,
But all is calm, and permanent, and clear,
God’s glory and the Lamb illumine all!
Now ends this song—not for self-honour sung,
But in the Luggie’s service. It hath been
A crownëd vision and a silver dream,
That I should touch this valley with renown
Eternal, make the fretting waters gleam
In light above the common light of earth.
The shoreless air of heaven is purer here,
The golden beams more keenly crystalline,
The skies more deeply sapphired. For to me,
About these emerald fields and lawny hills,
There linger glories which you cannot see,
And influences which you cannot feel,
Delight and incommunicable woe!
My home is here; and like a patient star,
Shining between untroubled Paradise
And my own soul, a mother shines therein,
The sole perfection of true womanhood:
A father—with the wisdom which pertains
To grey experience, and that stern delight
In naked truth, and reason which belongs
To the intense reflective mind—hath told
His fifty winters here. And all the hopes
Which gild the present; all the sad regrets
Which dull the past, are present to my soul
In the external forms and colourings
Of this dear valley. Therefore do I yearn
To make its stream flow in undying verse,
Low-singing thro’ the labyrinthine dell!
And let forgiving charity preclude
Harsh judgments from the singer: not that he
Fearfully would forestal the righteous word,
Blameworthy, spoken in kindness, and that truth
Which sanctions condemnation. Yet, dear Lord,
A youthful flattering of the spirit, touched
With a desire unquenchable, displays
My hope’s delirium. Oh! if the dream
Fade into nothing, into worse than nought,
Blackness of darkness like the golden zones
Of an autumnal sunset, and the night
Of unfulfilled ambition closes round
My destiny, think what an awful hell
O’erwhelms the conquer’d soul! Therefore, O men
Who guard with jealousy and loving care
The honour of our sacred literature,
Read with a kindness born of trustful hope,
Forgiving rambling schoolboy thoughts, too plain
To utter with a spasm, or clothe in cold
Mosaic fretwork of well-pleasing words,
Forgiving youth’s vagaries, want of skill,
And blind devotional passion for my home!
[A] Psalm cxlvii. 16-18.
[B] I am almost certain this name of the bird is merely local,
but I know no other.—[Mr. Robt. Gray, a well-known authority, says the
bird alluded to is the Missel-Thrush.—ED.]
In the Shadows.
_A POEM IN SONNETS._
Induction.
Enter, scared mortal! and in awe behold
The chancel of a dying poet’s mind,
Hung round, ah! not adorned, with pictures bold
And quaint, but roughly touched for the refined.
The chancel not the charnel house! For I
To God have raised a shrine immaculate
Therein, whereon His name to glorify,
And daily mercies meekly celebrate.
So in, scared breather! here no hint of death—
Skull or cross-bones suggesting sceptic fear;
Yea rather calmer beauty, purer breath
Inhaled from a diviner atmosphere.