And the wide earth contains not so lovely a spot
As the fields that encircled the home of our youth,
With all its dear visions of beauty and truth:
No meads are so green, and no flowers are so fair
As the wildings we gathered and garlanded there;
And the dim eye grows bright whilst recounting the joy,
The sorrows, and trials, and sports of the boy!
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote B: Written to illustrate a plate by Westall, in _Friendship's
Offering_, for 1830. To those who have not seen the picture, it may be
proper to state, that the subject is a child weeping over a dead dove.]
THE
LAMENT OF THE DISAPPOINTED.
"When will the grave fling her cold arms around me,
And earth on her dark bosom pillow my head?
Sorrow and trouble and anguish, have found me,
Oh that I slumbered in peace with the dead!
"The forests are budding, the fruit-trees in bloom,
And the voice of the turtle is heard in our land;
But my soul is bowed down by the spirit of gloom,
I no longer rejoice as the blossoms expand.
"And April is here with her rich varied skies,
Where the sunbeams of hope with the tempest contend,
And the bright drops that flow from her deep azure eyes
On the bosom of nature like diamonds descend.
"She scatters her jewels o'er forest and lea,
And casts in earth's lap all the wealth of the year;
But the promise she brings wakes no transports in me,
Still the landscape looks dim through the fast flowing tear."
Thus sung a poor exile, whom Sorrow had banished
From Joy's golden halls, in those moments when care
Struck deep in her soul and Hope's sunny smiles vanished,
And her spirit grew dark 'neath the scowl of despair.
But oh! there's a balm e'en for anguish like thine,
And He who permitted the evil has given,
In exchange for this lost earth, an Eden divine,
Revealing to man all the glories of heaven.
Then hush these vain murmurs, arise from the dust,
Submit to the hand who the dark chain can sever
Of sorrow and sin:--God is faithful and just--
Oh seek but his face and be happy for ever!
HYMN
OF THE CONVALESCENT.
My eyes have seen another spring
In floral beauty rise,
And happy birds on gladsome wing
Flit through the azure skies.
Though sickness bowed my feeble frame
Through winter's cheerless hours,
Life's sinking torch resumes its flame
With renovated powers.
Once more on nature's ample shrine,
Beneath the spreading boughs,
With lifted hands and hopes divine
I offer up my vows.
My incense is the breath of flowers,
Perfuming all the air;
My pillared fane these woodland bowers,
A heaven-built house of prayer;
My fellow-worshippers, the gay,
Free songsters of the grove,
Who to the closing eye of day
Warble their hymns of love.
The low and dulcet lyre of spring,
Swept by the vagrant breeze,
Borne far on echo's spreading wing
Stirs all the budding trees--
Again I catch the cuckoo's note
That faintly murmurs near,
The mingled melodies that float
To rapture's listening ear.
While April like a virgin pale
Retreats with modest grace,
And blushing through her tearful veil
Just shows her cherub face.
'Tis but a momentary gleam
From those young laughing eyes,
Yet, like a meteor's passing beam,
It lights up earth, and skies:
But, ere the sun exhales the dew
That sparkles on the grass,
Dark clouds flit o'er the smiling blue,
Like shadows o'er a glass.
But ah! upon the musing mind
Those varied smiles and tears,
Like words of love but half defined,
Give birth to hopes and fears.
The joyful heart one moment bounds,
Then feels a sudden chill,
Whispering in vague uncertain sounds
Presentiments of ill.
When dire disease an arrow sent,
And thrilled my breast with pain,
My mind was like a bow unbent,
Or harp-strings after rain;
I could not weep--I could not pray,
Nor raise my thoughts on high,
Till light from heaven, like April's ray,
Broke through the stormy sky!
YOUTH AND AGE.
YOUTH.
Pilgrim of life! thy hoary head
Is bent with age, thine eye
Looks downward to the silent dead,
Wreck of mortality!--
The friends who flourished in thy day
Have sought their narrow home;
Their spirits whisper, "Come away!"--
AGE.
My soul replies, I come.--
I tread the path I trod a child,
The fields I loved of yore;
The flowers that 'neath my footsteps smiled
Now meet my gaze no more.
I stand beneath this giant oak!
It was an aged tree,
Hollowed by time's resistless stroke,
When life was green with me.
Its lofty head it proudly rears
To greet the summer sky,
Whilst, bending with the weight of years,
I feebly totter by.
And hushed are all the thousand songs
That filled these branches high:
Echo no more for me prolongs
The woodland minstrelsy.
Silence has gathered round life's hall;
My friends are in the clay;
I hear no more the footsteps fall,
That cheered my early day;
I see no more the faces dear,
Which shone around my hearth:
Bereft of all--I sojourn here--
Still happy, though on earth!--
YOUTH.
And canst thou smile when all are gone
Who shared thy youthful prime;
Content to wait and watch alone,
To grapple still with time?
How comes it that thou thus below
Hast rest above the sod,
Which brings to memory scenes of woe?
AGE.
It is the will of God!
MARY HUME.
A BALLAD.
"He will come to night," young Mary said,
And checked the rising sigh;
And gazed on the stars that o'er her head
Shone out in the deep blue sky.
"Heaven speed his voyage!--though absent long,
The painful vigil's o'er--
The skies are clear--the breeze is strong--
We meet to part no more!"
While yet she spoke a sudden chill
O'er her ardent spirit crept;
A sad presentiment of ill--
She turned away and wept.
Far off the sigh of ocean stole--
The sweeping of the sounding surge--
In plaintive murmurs o'er her soul,
Like wailing of a funeral dirge.
And in the wind there is a tone
Which whispers to her sinking heart--
"Mary we meet in death alone;
In realms of bliss no more to part."
The moon has sunk in her ocean cave,
Fled are the shades of night,
And morning bursts on the purple wave
In floods of golden-light.
The sudden stroke of the village bell
Checks the fisher's blithesome song;
He pauses to hear how rock and fell
Its sullen tones prolong.
"Some soul to its last account has sped:
Dost thou hear that solemn sound?"
"'Tis Mary Hume!"--his comrade said--
"Last night her love was drowned!"
THE SPIRIT OF MOTION.
Spirit of eternal motion!
Ruler of the stormy ocean,
Lifter of the restless waves,
Rider of the blast that raves
Hoarsely through yon lofty oak,
Bending to thy mystic stroke;
Man from age to age has sought
Thy secret--but it baffles thought!
Agent of the Deity!
Offspring of eternity,
Guider of the steeds of time
Along the starry track sublime,
Founder of each wondrous art,
Mover of the human heart;
Since the world's primeval day
All nature has confessed thy sway.
They who strive thy laws to find
Might as well arrest the wind,
Measure out the drops of rain,
Count the sands which bound the main,
Quell the earthquake's sullen shock,
Chain the eagle to the rock,
Bid the sun his heat assuage,
The mountain torrent cease to rage.
Spirit, active and divine--
Life and all its powers are thine!
Guided by the first great cause,
Sun and moon obey thy laws,
Which to man must ever be
A wonder and a mystery,
Known alone to him who gave
Thee sovereignty o'er wind and wave
And only chained thee in the grave!
LINES
WRITTEN DURING
A GALE OF WIND.
Oh nature! though the blast is yelling,
Loud roaring through the bending tree,
There's sorrow in man's darksome dwelling,
There's rapture still with thee!
I gaze upon the clouds wind-driven,
The white storm-crested deep;
My heart with human cares is riven--
O'er these--I cannot weep.
'Tis not the rush of wave or wind
That wakes my anxious fears,
That presses on my troubled mind,
And fills my eyes with tears;
I feel the icy breath of sorrow
My ardent spirit chill,
The dark--dark presage of the morrow,
The sense of coming ill.
I hear the mighty billows rave;
There's music in their roar,
When strong in wrath the wind-lashed wave
Springs on the groaning shore;
A solemn pleasure in the tone
That shakes the lonely woods,
As winter mounts his icy throne
'Mid storms and wasting floods.
The trumpet of the angry blast
Peals loud o'er earth and main;
The elemental strife is past,
The heavens are bright again.
And shall I doubt the healing power
Of Him who lives to save,
Who in this dark appalling hour
Can silence wind and wave?
Almighty Ruler of the storm!
One beam of grace display,
And the fierce tempests that deform
My soul, shall pass away.
THE
SPIRIT OF THE SPRING.
The spirit of the shower,
Of the sunshine and the breeze,
Of the dewy twilight hour,
Of the bud and opening flower,
My soul delighted sees.
Stern winter's robe of gray,
Beneath thy balmy sigh,
Like mist-wreaths melt away,
When the rosy laughing day
Lifts up his golden eye.--
Spirit of ethereal birth,
Thy azure banner floats,
In lucid folds, o'er air and earth,
And budding woods pour forth their mirth
In rapture-breathing notes.
I see upon the fleecy cloud
The spreading of thy wings;
The hills and vales rejoice aloud,
And Nature, starting from her shroud,
To meet her bridegroom springs.
Spirit of the rainbow zone,
Of the fresh and breezy morn,--
Spirit of climes where joy alone
For ever hovers round thy throne,
On wings of light upborne,
Eternal youth is in thy train
With rapture-beaming eyes,
And Beauty, with her magic chain,
And Hope, that laughs at present pain,
Points up to cloudless skies.
Spirit of love, of life, and light!
Each year we hail thy birth--
The day-star from the grave of night
That set to rise in skies more bright,--
To bless the sons of earth
With leaf--and bud--and perfumed flower,
Still deck the barren sod;
In thee we trace a higher power,
In thee we claim a brighter dower,
The day-spring of our God!--
O COME TO THE MEADOWS.
O come to the meadows! I'll show you where
Primrose and violet blow,
And the hawthorn spreads its blossoms fair,
White as the driven snow.
I'll show you where the daisies dot
With silver stars the lea,
The orchis, and forget-me-not,
The flower of memory!
The gold-cup and the meadow-sweet,
That love the river's side,
The reed that bows the wave to meet,
And sighs above the tide.
The stately flag that gaily rears
Aloft its yellow crest,
The lily in whose cup the tears
Of morn delight to rest.
The first in Nature's dainty wreath,
We'll cull the brier-rose,
The crowfoot and the purple heath,
And pink that sweetly blows.
The hare-bell with its airy flowers
Shall deck my Laura's breast,--
Of all that bud in woodland bowers
I love the hare-bell best!
I'll pull the bonny golden broom
To bind thy flowing hair;
For thee the eglantine shall bloom,
Whose fragrance fills the air.
We'll sit beside yon wooded knoll,
To hear the blackbird sing,
And fancy in his merry troll
The joyous voice of spring!
We'll sit and watch the sparkling waves
That leap exulting by,
Whilst in the pines above us raves
The wind's wild minstrelsy.
It swells the echoes of the grove,
'Tis Nature's plaintive voice;
The winds and waters breathe of love,
And all her tribes rejoice.
Whilst youth, and hope, and health are ours,
We'll rove the verdant glade;
But ah! spring's sweetest, loveliest flowers,
Like us, but bloom to fade.
They spread their beauties to the sun,
And live their little day,
Then droop, and wither, one by one,
Till all are passed away.
Already scattered in the dust
My first May garland lies;
The hope that owns a mortal trust,
As quickly fades and dies.
Then let us seek a brighter wreath
Than Nature here has given;
The flowers of virtue bud beneath,
But only bloom in heaven!
THOU WILT THINK OF ME, LOVE.
When these eyes, long dimmed with weeping,
In the silent dust are sleeping;
When above my narrow bed
The breeze shall wave the thistle's head--
Thou wilt think of me, love!
When the queen of beams and showers
Comes to dress the earth with flowers;
When the days are long and bright,
And the moon shines all the night--
Thou wilt think of me, love!
When the tender corn is springing,
And the merry thrush is singing;
When the swallows come and go,
On light wings flitting to and fro--
Thou wilt think of me, love!
When laughing childhood learns by rote
The cuckoo's oft-repeated note;
When the meads are fresh and green,
And the hawthorn buds are seen--
Thou wilt think of me, love!
When 'neath April's rainbow skies
Violets ope their purple eyes;
When mossy bank and verdant mound
Sweet knots of primroses have crowned--
Thou wilt think of me, love!
When the meadows glitter white,
Like a sheet of silver light;
When blue bells gay and cowslips bloom,
Sweet-scented brier, and golden broom--
Thou wilt think of me, love!
Each bud shall be to thee a token
Of a fond heart reft and broken;
And the month of joy and gladness
Shall but fill thy soul with sadness--
And thou wilt sigh for me, love!
When thou rov'st the woodland bowers,
Thou shalt cull spring's sweetest flowers,
And shalt strew with bitter weeping
The lonely bed where I am sleeping--
And sadly mourn for me, love!
THE
FOREST RILL.
Young Naiad of the sparry grot,
Whose azure eyes before me burn,
In what sequestered lonely spot
Lies hid thy flower-enwreathed urn?
Beneath what mossy bank enshrined,
Within what ivy-mantled nook,
Sheltered alike from sun and wind,
Lies hid thy source, sweet murmuring brook?
Deep buried lies thy airy shell
Beneath thy waters clear;
Far echoing up the woodland dell
Thy wind-swept harp I hear.
I catch its soft and mellow tones
Amid the long grass gliding,
Now broken 'gainst the rugged stones,
In hoarse, deep accents chiding.
The wandering breeze that stirs the grove,
In plaintive moans replying,
To every leafy bough above
His tender tale is sighing;
Ruffled beneath his viewless wing
Thy wavelets fret and wimple,
Now forth rejoicingly they spring
In many a laughing dimple.
To nature's timid lovely queen
Thy sylvan haunts are known;
She seeks thy rushy margin green
To weave her flowery zone;
Light waving o'er thy fairy flood
In all their vernal pride,
She sees her crown of opening buds
Reflected in the tide.
On--on!--for ever brightly on!
Thy lucid waves are flowing,
Thy waters sparkle as they run,
Their long, long journey going;
Bright flashing in the noon-tide beam
O'er stone and pebble breaking,
And onward to some mightier stream
Their slender tribute taking.
Oh such is life! a slender rill,
A stream impelled by Time;
To death's dark caverns flowing still,
To seek a brighter clime.
Though blackened by the stains of earth,
And broken be its course,
From life's pure fount we trace its birth,
Eternity its source!
While floating down the tide of years,
The Christian will not mourn her lot;
There is a hand will dry her tears,
A land where sorrows are forgot.
Though in the crowded page of time
The record of her name may die,
'Tis traced in annals more sublime,
The volume of Eternity!
TO WATER LILIES.
Beautiful flowers! with your petals bright,
Ye float on the waves like spirits of light,
Wooing the zephyr that ruffles your leaves
With a gentle sigh, like a lover that grieves,
When his mistress, blushing, turns away
From his pleading voice and impassioned lay.
Beautiful flowers! the sun's westward beam,
Still lingering, plays on the crystal stream,
And ye look like some Naiad's golden shrine,
That is lighted up with a flame divine;
Or a bark in which love might safely glide,
Impelled by the breeze o'er the purple tide.
Beautiful flowers! how I love to gaze
On your glorious hues, in the noon-tide blaze,
And to see them reflected far below
In the azure waves, as they onward flow;
When the spirit who moves them sighing turns
Where his golden crown on the water burns.
Beautiful flowers! in the rosy west
The sun has sunk in his crimson vest,
And the pearly tears of the weeping night
Have spangled your petals with gems of light,
And turned to stars every wandering beam
Which the pale moon throws on the silver stream.
Beautiful flowers!--yet a little while,
And the sun on your faded buds shall smile;
And the balm-laden zephyr that o'er you sighed
Shall scatter your leaves o'er the glassy tide,
And the spirit that moved the stream shall spread
His lucid robe o'er your watery bed.
Beautiful flowers! our youth is as brief
As the short-lived date of your golden leaf.
The summer will come, and each amber urn,
Like a love-lighted torch, on the waves shall burn;
But when the first bloom of our life is o'er
No after spring can its freshness restore,
But faith can twine round the hoary head
A garland of beauty when youth is fled!
AUTUMN.
Autumn, thy rushing blast
Sweeps in wild eddies by,
Whirling the sear leaves past,
Beneath my feet, to die.
Nature her requiem sings
In many a plaintive tone,
As to the wind she flings
Sad music, all her own.
The murmur of the rill
Is hoarse and sullen now,
And the voice of joy is still
In grove and leafy bough.
There's not a single wreath,
Of all Spring's thousand flowers,
To strew her bier in death,
Or deck her faded bowers.
I hear a spirit sigh
Where the meeting pines resound,
Which tells me all must die,
As the leaf dies on the ground.
The brightest hopes we cherish,
Which own a mortal trust,
But bloom awhile to perish
And moulder in the dust.
Sweep on, thou rushing wind,
Thou art music to mine ear,
Awakening in my mind
A voice I love to hear.
The branches o'er my head
Send forth a tender moan;
Like the wail above the dead
Is that sad and solemn tone.
Though all things perish here,
The spirit cannot die,
It owns a brighter sphere,
A home in yon fair sky.
The soul will flee away,
And when the silent clod
Enfolds my mouldering clay,
Shall live again with God;
Where Autumn's chilly blast
Shall never strip the bowers,
Or icy Winter cast
A blight upon the flowers;
But Spring, in all her bloom,
For ever flourish there,
And the children of the tomb
Forget this world of care.--
The children who have passed
Death's tideless ocean o'er,
And Hope's blest anchor cast
On that bright eternal shore;
Who sought, through Him who bled
Their erring race to save,
A Sun, whose beams shall shed
A light upon the grave!
THE REAPERS' SONG.
The harvest is nodding on valley and plain,
To the scythe and the sickle its treasures must yield;
Through sunshine and shower we have tended the grain;
'Tis ripe to our hand!--to the field--to the field!
If the sun on our labours too warmly should smile,
Why a horn of good ale shall the long hours beguile.
Then, a largess! a largess!--kind stranger, we pray,
We have toiled through the heat of the long summer day!
With his garland of poppies red August is here,
And the forest is losing its first tender green;
Pale Autumn will reap the last fruits of the year,
And Winter's white mantle will cover the scene.
To the field!--to the field! whilst the Summer is ours
We will reap her ripe corn--we will cull her bright flowers.
Then, a largess! a largess! kind stranger, we pray,
For your sake we have toiled through the long summer day.
Ere the first blush of morning is red in the skies,
Ere the lark plumes his wing, or the dew drops are dry,
Ere the sun walks abroad, must the harvestman rise,
With stout heart, unwearied, the sickle to ply:
He exults in his strength, when the ale-horn is crown'd,
And the reapers' glad shouts swell the echoes around.
Then, a largess! a largess!--kind stranger, we pray,
For your sake we have toiled through the long summer day!
WINTER.
Majestic King of storms! around
Thy wan and hoary brow
A spotless diadem is bound
Of everlasting snow:
Time, which dissolves all earthly things,
O'er thee hath vainly waved his wings!
The sun, with his refulgent beams,
Thaws not thy icy zone;
Lord of ten thousand frozen streams,
That sleep around thy throne,
Whose crystal barriers may defy
The genial warmth of summer's sky.
What human foot shall dare intrude
Beyond the howling waste,
Or view the untrodden solitude,
Where thy dark home is placed;
In those far realms of death where light
Shrieks from thy glance and all is night?
The earth has felt thine iron tread,
The streams have ceased to flow,
The leaves beneath thy feet lie dead,
And keen the north winds blow:
Nature lies in her winding sheet
Of dazzling snow, and blinding sleet.
Thy voice has chained the troubled deep;
Within thy mighty hand,
The restless world of waters sleep
On Greenland's barren strand.
Thy stormy heralds, loud and shrill,
Have bid the foaming waves lie still.
Where lately many a gallant prow
Spurned back the whitening spray,
An icy desert glitters now,
Beneath the moon's wan ray:
Full many a fathom deep below
The dark imprisoned waters flow.
How gloriously above thee gleam
The planetary train,
And the pale moon with clearer beam
Chequers the frost-bound plain;
The sparkling diadem of night
Circles thy brow with tenfold light.
I love thee not--yet when I raise
To heaven my wondering eyes,
I feel transported at the blaze
Of beauty in the skies,
And laud the power that, e'en to thee,
Hath given such pomp and majesty!
I turn and shrink before the blast
That sweeps the leafless tree,
Careering on the tempest past,
Thy snowy wreath I see;
But Spring will come in beauty forth
And chase thee to the frozen north!
FANCY AND THE POET.
POET.
Enchanting spirit! at thy votive shrine
I lowly bend one simple wreath to twine;
O come from thy ideal world and fling
Thy airy fingers o'er my rugged string;
Sweep the dark chords of thought and give to earth
The wild sweet song that tells thy heavenly birth--
FANCY.
Happiness, when from earth she fled,
I passed on her heaven-ward flight,--
"Take this wreath," the spirit said,
"And bathe it in floods of light;
To the sons of sorrow this token give,
And bid them follow my steps and live!"
I took the wreath from her radiant hand,
Each flower was a silver star;
I turned this dark earth to a fairy land,
When I hither drove my car;
But I wove the wreath round my tresses bright,
And man only saw its reflected light.
Many a lovely dream I've given,
And many a song divine,
But never--oh never!--that wreath from heaven
Shall mortal temples twine.
Hope and love in the chaplet glow:
'Tis all too bright for a world of woe!
POET.
Hist--Beautiful spirit! why silent so soon?
My soul drinks each word of thy magical tune;
My lyre owns thy touch, and its tremulous strings
Still vibrate beneath the soft play of thy wings!
Resume thy sweet lay, and reveal, ere we part,
Thy home, lovely spirit,--and say what thou art.
FANCY.
The gleam of a star which thou canst not see,
Or an eye 'neath its sleeping lid,
The tune of a far off melody,
The voice of a stream that's hid;
Such must I still remain to thee,
A wonder and a mystery.
I live in the poet's dream,
I flash on the painter's eye,
I dwell in the moon's pale beam,
In the depths of the star-lit sky;
I traverse the earth, the air, the main,
And bind young hearts in my golden chain.
I float on the crimson cloud,
My voice is in every breeze,
I speak in the tempest loud,
In the sigh of the wind-stirred trees;
To the sons of earth, in a magic tone,
I tell of a world more bright than their own!
NIGHT'S PHANTASIES.
A FRAGMENT.
I have dreamed sweet dreams of a summer night,
When the moon was walking in cloudless light,
And my soul to the regions of Fancy sprung,
While the spirits of air their soft anthems sung,
Strains wafted down from those heavenly spheres
Which may not be warbled in waking ears;
More sweet than the voice of waters flowing,
Than the breeze over beds of violets blowing,
When it stirs the pines, and sultry day
Fans himself cool with their tremulous play.
On the sleeper's ear those rich notes stealing,
Speak of purer and holier feeling
Than man in his pilgrimage here below,
In the bondage of sin, can ever know.
I heard in my slumbers the ceaseless roar
Of the sparkling waves, as they met the shore,
Till lulled by the surge of the moon-lit deep,
By the heaving ocean I sank to sleep.
And a magic spell on my spirit was cast,
And forms that had perished in ages past,
Were by Fancy revealed to my wondering view,
As the veil of Oblivion she backward drew,
And showed me a glorious vision, dressed
In the rosy light of the glowing west.
Such colours at parting the day-god throws,
To gild his path, as rejoicing he goes,
Like a victor red with the spoils of fight,
To raise through darkness the banner of light!