“Ye lowly cottages wherein we dwelt
A ministration of your own was yours;
Can I forget you, being, as you were,
So beautiful among the pleasant fields
In which ye stood? or can I here forget
The plain and seemly countenance, with which
Ye dealt out your plain comforts? Yet had ye
Delights and exultations of your own.
Eager, and never weary, we pursued
Our home-amusements, by the warm peat-fire,
At evening; when, with pencil and smooth slate,
In square divisions parcelled out, and all
With crosses and with cyphers scribbled o’er,
We schemed and puzzled, head opposed to head,
In strife too humble to be named in verse;
Or round the naked table, snow white deal,
Cherry or maple, sate in close array,
And to the combat, loo or whist,[D] led on
A thick-ribbed army; not, as in the world,
Neglected, or ungratefully thrown by,
Even for the very service they had wrought,
But husbanded thro’ many a long campaign.
Uncouth assemblage was it, where no fear
Had changed their functions; some plebeian cards
Which fate, beyond the promise of their birth,
Had dignified, and called to represent
The persons of departed potentates.
Oh, with what echos on the board they fell!
Ironic diamonds,--clubs, hearts, diamonds, spades,--
A congregation piteously akin!
Cheap matter offered they for boyish wit,
Those sooty knaves, precipitated down,
With scoffs and taunts, like Vulcan out of heaven:
The paramount ace, a moon in her eclipse,
Queens gleaming thro’ their splendour’s last decay,
And monarchs surly at the wrongs sustained
By royal-visages. Meanwhile, abroad
Incessant rain was falling, or the frost
Raged bitterly, with keen and silent work;
And, interrupting oft that eager game,
From under Esthwaits’ splitting scenes of ice
The pent up air, struggling to free itself,
Gave out, to meadow grounds and hills, a loud
Protracted yelling; like the noise of wolves,
Howling, in troops, along the Bothnic main.”
And, then, as a specimen of the out-door sports, and exercises of his
youth, whilst dwelling with his good old dame, he says:
“And in the frosty season, when the sun
Was set, and visible for many a mile
The cottage windows blazed thro’ twilight gloom,
I heeded not their summons; happy time
It was, indeed, for all of us--for me,
It was a time of rapture! Clear and loud,
The village clock struck six--I wheeled about,
Proud and exulting, like an untired horse,
That cares not for his home. All shod with steel
We hissed along the polished ice in games
Confederate, imitative of the chase,
And woodland pleasures--the resounding horn,
The pack loud chiming, and the hunted hare.
So thro’ the darkness and the cold we flew,
And not a voice was idle; with the din
Smitten, the precipices rang aloud;
The leafless trees, and every icy crag,
Tinkled like iron; while far distant hills
Into the tumult sent an awful sound
Of melancholy not unnoticed, while the stars
Eastward were sparkling clear, and in the west
The orange sky of evening died away.
Not seldom from the uproar I retired
Into a silent bay, or sportively
Glanced sideway, leaving the tumultuous throng
To cut across the reflex of a star,
That fled, and flying still before me, gleamed
Upon the glassy plain; and oftentimes,
When we had given our bodies to the wind,
And all the shadowy banks on either side
Came sweeping through the darkness, spinning still
The rapid line of motion, then at once
Have I, reclining back upon my heels
Stopped short; yet still the solitary cliffs
Wheeled by me, even as if the earth had rolled,
With visible motion, her diurnal round!
Behind me did they stretch in solemn train,
Feebler and feebler, and I stood and watched,
Till all was tranquil as a dreamless sleep.”
And with this famous skating passage--the finest realization of the kind
in poetry, I will conclude this outline of the poet’s school-days and
mental history.