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diff --git a/old/55716-0.txt b/old/55716-0.txt deleted file mode 100644 index 0550ca6..0000000 --- a/old/55716-0.txt +++ /dev/null @@ -1,4211 +0,0 @@ -Project Gutenberg's The Poetical Works of David Gray, by David Gray - -This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with -almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or -re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included -with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org/license - - -Title: The Poetical Works of David Gray - A New and Enlarged Edition - -Author: David Gray - -Editor: Henry Glassford Bell - -Release Date: October 9, 2017 [EBook #55716] - -Language: English - -Character set encoding: UTF-8 - -*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE POETICAL WORKS OF DAVID GRAY *** - - - - -Produced by Larry B. Harrison, Paul Marshall, Bryan Ness -and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at -http://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images -generously made available by The Internet Archive/Canadian -Libraries) - - - - - - -Transcriber's Notes: - - Underscores "_" before and after a word or phrase indicate _italics_ - in the original text. - Small capitals have been converted to SOLID capitals. - Old or antiquated spellings have been preserved. - Typographical errors have been silently corrected but other variations - in spelling and punctuation remain unaltered. - Added subsection “Miscellaneous Poems” to Table of Contents as it is - included in the text. - - - - - THE POEMS OF DAVID GRAY. - - - PUBLISHED BY - JAMES MACLEHOSE, GLASGOW. - - MACMILLAN AND CO., LONDON. - - _London, Hamilton, Adams and Co._ - _Cambridge, Macmillan and Co._ - _Edinburgh, Edmonston and Douglas_. - _Dublin, W. H. Smith and Son_. - - MDCCCLXXIV. - - - - - THE POETICAL WORKS OF _DAVID GRAY_ - - A NEW AND ENLARGED EDITION, EDITED BY - HENRY GLASSFORD BELL - - Glasgow - JAMES MACLEHOSE - PUBLISHER TO THE UNIVERSITY - - LONDON: MACMILLAN AND CO. - 1874 - - _All rights reserved_ - - PRINTED AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS BY - MACLEHOSE AND MACDOUGALL, - GLASGOW. - - TO - The Memory of - - _HENRY GLASSFORD BELL_, - LATE SHERIFF OF LANARKSHIRE, - - _THIS VOLUME_, - - _ON WHICH HIS LATEST LITERARY LABOUR_ - _WAS BESTOWED_, - - IS - - Affectionately Dedicated. - - - - -_INTRODUCTORY NOTE._ - - -This new Edition of the Works of David Gray, containing, it is -believed, all the maturely finished poems of the author, is a double -memorial. It commemorates “the thin-spun life” of a man of true -genius and rare promise, and the highly cultured judgment and tender -sympathies of a critic who has passed away in the vigorous fulness of -his years. - -A specimen page of “The Luggie,” forwarded with an appreciative letter -from a friend, reached the author on the day before his death. He -received it as “good news”—the fragmentary realization of his ambitious -dreams—and, in the hope that his name might not be wholly forgotten, -said he could now enter “without tears” into his rest. - -Within a week before his removal from amongst us, Mr. Glassford Bell -was engaged in correcting the proofs of the present edition. He had -selected from a mass of MSS. and other material what new pieces he -thought worthy of insertion in this enlarged edition—he had rearranged -the whole and finally revised the greater part of the volume, which it -was his intention to preface with a Memoir and Criticism. He looked -forward to accomplishing this labour of love in a period of retirement -from more active work which he had proposed to pass in Italy. - -It has been thought inadvisable to commit to other hands the -unexpectedly interrupted task. For a statement of the few and -simple vicissitudes of the Poet’s career, as well as a brief but -discriminating estimate of his rank in our literature, the reader is -referred to the speech—at the close of the volume—delivered by Mr. -Bell, nine years ago, on the inauguration of the Monument in the -“Auld Aisle” Burying-ground. Of the movement which resulted in this -tribute to departed genius, the late Sheriff was one of the most active -promoters. Himself a poet, and a generous patron of all genuine art, -the West of Scotland has known no “larger heart” or “kindlier hand.” -There is something suggestive in the fact that his last effort was to -throw another wreath on the early tomb of David Gray. - -_March, 1874._ - - - - - _CONTENTS._ - - - PAGE - THE LUGGIE, 1 - IN THE SHADOWS, 63 - - Miscellaneous Poems. - A WINTER RAMBLE, 99 - THE HOME-COMER, 104 - MY BROWN LITTLE BROTHER OF THREE, 108 - THE “AULD AISLE,” 111 - TO JEANETTE, 120 - THE POET AND HIS FRIEND, 124 - THE TWO STREAMS, 127 - EVENING, 132 - THE LOVE-TRYST, 134 - AN EPISTLE TO A FRIEND, 139 - A VISION OF VENICE, 145 - THE ANEMONE, 150 - THE YELLOWHAMMER, 154 - THE CUCKOO, 158 - FAME, 161 - HONEYSUCKLE, 164 - WHERE THE LILIES USED TO SPRING, 167 - SNOW, 170 - OCTOBER, 175 - THE ROMAN DYKE, 179 - - Sonnets. - EZEKIEL, 183 - THE MAVIS, 184 - DESPONDENCY, 185 - THE MOON, I., II., 186 - THE LUGGIE, I., II., III., 188 - THOMAS THE RHYMER, 191 - THE LIME-TREE, 192 - THE BROOKLET, 193 - MAIDENHOOD, 194 - SLEEP, 195 - THE DAYS OF OLD MYTHOLOGY, 196 - DISCONTENTMENT, 197 - SNOW, 198 - THE THRUSH, 199 - STARS, 200 - MY EPITAPH, 201 - - GRAY’S MONUMENT, 203 - - - - -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. - -I. - - If it must be; if it must be, O God! - That I die young, and make no further moans; - That, underneath the unrespective sod, - In unescutcheoned privacy, my bones - Shall crumble soon,—then give me strength to bear - The last convulsive throe of too sweet breath! - I tremble from the edge of life, to dare - The dark and fatal leap, having no faith, - No glorious yearning for the Apocalypse; - But, like a child that in the night-time cries - For light, I cry; forgetting the eclipse - Of knowledge and our human destinies. - O peevish and uncertain soul! obey - The law of life in patience till the Day. - -II. - - “Whom the gods love die young.” The thought is old; - And yet it soothed the sweet Athenian mind. - I take it with all pleasure, overbold, - Perhaps, yet to its virtue much inclined - By an inherent love for what is fair. - This is the utter poetry of woe— - That the bright-flashing gods should cure despair - By love, and make youth precious here below. - I die, being young; and, dying, could become - A pagan, with the tender Grecian trust. - Let death, the fell anatomy, benumb - The hand that writes, and fill my mouth with dust— - Chant no funereal theme, but, with a choral - Hymn, O ye mourners! hail immortal youth auroral! - -III. - - With the tear-worthy four, consumption killed - In youthful prime, before the nebulous mind - Had its symmetric shapeliness defined, - Had its transcendent destiny fulfilled.— - May future ages grant me gracious room, - With Pollok, in the voiceless solitude - Finding his holiest rapture, happiest mood; - Poor White for ever poring o’er the tomb; - With Keats, whose lucid fancy mounting far - Saw heaven as an intenser, a more keen - Redintegration of the Beauty seen - And felt by all the breathers on this star; - With gentle Bruce, flinging melodious blame - Upon the Future for an uncompleted name. - -IV. - - Oh many a time with Ovid have I borne - My father’s vain, yet well-meant reprimand, - To leave the sweet-air’d, clover-purpled land - Of rhyme—its Lares loftily forlorn, - With all their pure humanities unworn— - To batten on the bare Theologies! - To quench a glory lighted at the skies, - Fed on one essence with the silver morn, - Were of all blasphemies the most insane. - So deeplier given to the delicious spell - I clung to thee, heart-soothing Poesy! - Now on a sick-bed rack’d with arrowy pain - I lift white hands of gratitude, and cry, - Spirit of God in Milton! was it well? - -V. - - Last night, on coughing slightly with sharp pain, - There came arterial blood, and with a sigh - Of absolute grief I cried in bitter vein, - That drop is my death-warrant: I must die. - Poor meagre life is mine, meagre and poor! - Rather a piece of childhood thrown away; - An adumbration faint; the overture - To stifled music; year that ends in May; - The sweet beginning of a tale unknown; - A dream unspoken; promise unfulfilled; - A morning with no noon, a rose unblown— - All its deep rich vermilion crushed and killed - I’ th’ bud by frost:—Thus in false fear I cried, - Forgetting that to abolish death Christ died. - -VI. - - Sweetly, my mother! Go not yet away— - I have not told my story. Oh, not yet, - With the fair past before me, can I lay - My cheek upon the pillow to forget. - O sweet, fair past, my twenty years of youth - Thus thrown away, not fashioning a man; - But fashioning a memory, forsooth! - More feminine than follower of Pan. - O God! let me not die for years and more! - Fulfil Thyself; and I will live then surely - Longer than a mere childhood. Now heart-sore, - Weary, with being weary—weary, purely. - In dying, mother, I can find no pleasure - Except in being near thee without measure. - -VII. - - Hew Atlas for my monument; upraise - A pyramid for my tomb, that, undestroyed - By rank, oblivion, and the hungry void, - My name shall echo through prospective days. - O careless conqueror! cold, abysmal grave! - Is it not sad—is it not sad, my heart— - To smother young ambition, and depart - Unhonoured and unwilling, like death’s slave? - No rare immortal remnant of my thought - Embalms my life; no poem, firmly reared - Against the shock of time, ignobly feared— - But all my life’s progression come to nought. - Hew Atlas! build a pyramid in a plain! - Oh, cool the fever burning in my brain! - -VIII. - - From this entangling labyrinthine maze - Of doctrine, creed, and theory; from vague - Vain speculations; the detested plague - Of spiritual pride, and vile affrays - Sectarian, good Lord, deliver me! - Nature! thy placid monitory glory - Shines uninterrogated, while the story - Goes round of this and that theology, - This creed, and that, till patience close the list. - Once more on Carronben’s wind-shrilling height - To sit in sovereign solitude, and quite - Forget the hollow world—a pantheist - Beyond Bonaventura! This were cheer - Passing the tedious tale of shallow pulpiteer. - -IX. - - A vale of tears, a wilderness of woe, - A sad unmeaning mystery of strife; - Reason with Passion strives, and Feeling ever - Battles with Conscience, clear eyed arbiter. - Thus spake I in sad mood not long ago, - To my dear father, of this human life, - Its jars and phantasies. Soft answered he, - With soul of love strong as a mountain river: - We make ourselves—Son, you are what you are - Neither by fate nor providence nor cause - External: all unformed humanity - Waiteth the stamp of individual laws; - And as you love and act, the plastic spirit - Doth the impression evermore inherit. - -X. - - Last Autumn we were four, and travelled far - With Phœbe in her golden plenilune, - O’er stubble-fields where sheaves of harvest boon - Stood slanted. Many a clear and stedfast star - Twinkled its radiance thro’ crisp-leaved beeches, - Over the farm to which, with snatches rare - Of ancient ballads, songs, and saucy speeches, - He hurried, happy mad. Then each had there - A dove-eyed sister pining for him, four - Fair ladies legacied with loveliness, - Chaste as a group of stars, or lilies blown - In rural nunnery. O God! Thy sore - Strange ways expound. Two to the grave have gone - Without apparent reason more or less. - -XI. - - Now, while the long-delaying ash assumes - The delicate April green, and, loud and clear, - Through the cool, yellow, mellow twilight glooms, - The thrush’s song enchants the captive ear; - Now, while a shower is pleasant in the falling, - Stirring the still perfume that wakes around; - Now, that doves mourn, and from the distance calling, - The cuckoo answers, with a sovereign sound,— - Come, with thy native heart, O true and tried! - But leave all books; for what with converse high, - Flavoured with Attic wit, the time shall glide - On smoothly, as a river floweth by, - Or as on stately pinion, through the grey - Evening, the culver cuts his liquid way. - -XII. - - Why are all fair things at their death the fairest: - Beauty the beautifullest in decay? - Why doth rich sunset clothe each closing day - With ever-new apparelling the rarest? - Why are the sweetest melodies all born - Of pain and sorrow? Mourneth not the dove, - In the green forest gloom, an absent love? - Leaning her breast against that cruel thorn, - Doth not the nightingale, poor bird, complain - And integrate her uncontrollable woe - To such perfection, that to hear is pain? - Thus, Sorrow and Death—alone realities— - Sweeten their ministration, and bestow - On troublous life a relish of the skies! - -XIII. - - And, well-belovëd, is this all, this all? - Gone, like a vapour which the potent morn - Kills, and in killing glorifies! I call - Through the lone night for thee, my dear first-born - Soul-fellow! but my heart vibrates in vain. - Ah! well I know, and often fancy forms - The weather-blown churchyard where thou art lain— - The churchyard whistling to the frequent storms. - But down the valley, by the river side, - Huge walnut-trees—bronze-foliaged, motionless - As leaves of metal—in their shadows hide - Warm nests, low music, and true tenderness. - But thou, betrothed! art far from me, from me. - O heart! be merciful—I loved him utterly. - -XIV. - - Father! when I have passed, with deathly swoon, - Into the ghost-world, immaterial, dim, - O may nor time nor circumstance dislimn - My image from thy memory, as noon - Steals from the fainting bloom the cooling dew! - Like flower, itself completing bud and bell, - In lonely thicket, be thy sorrow true, - And in expression secret. Worse than hell - To see the grave hypocrisy—to hear - The crocodilian sighs of summer friends - Outraging grief’s assuasive, holy ends! - But thou art faithful, father, and sincere; - And in thy brain the love of me shall dwell - Like the memorial music in the curved sea-shell. - -XV. - - From my sick-bed gazing upon the west, - Where all the bright effulgencies of day - Lay steeped in sunless vapours, raw and gray,— - Herein (methought) is mournfully exprest - The end of false ambitions, sullen doom - Of my brave hopes, Promethean desires: - Barren and perfumeless, my name expires - Like summer-day setting in joyless gloom. - Yet faint I not in sceptical dismay, - Upheld by the belief that all pure thought - Is deathless, perfect: that the truths out-wrought - By the laborious mind cannot decay, - Being evolutions of that Sovereign Mind - Akin to man’s; yet orbed, exhaustless, undefined. - -XVI. - - The daisy-flower is to the summer sweet, - Though utterly unknown it live and die; - The spheral harmony were incomplete - Did the dew’d laverock mount no more the sky, - Because her music’s linkëd sorcery - Bewitched no mortal heart to heavenly mood. - This is the law of nature, that the deed - Should dedicate its excellence to God, - And in so doing find sufficient meed. - Then why should I make these heart-burning cries, - In sickly rhyme with morbid feeling rife, - For fame and temporal felicities? - Forgetting that in holy labour lies - The scholarship severe of human life. - -XVII. - - O God, it is a terrible thing to die - Into the inextinguishable life; - To leave this known world with a feeble cry, - All its poor jarring and ignoble strife. - O that some shadowy spectre would disclose - The Future, and the soul’s confineless hunger - Satisfy with some knowledge of repose! - For here the lust of avarice waxeth stronger, - Making life hateful; youth alone is true, - Full of a glorious self-forgetfulness: - Better to die inhabiting the new - Kingdom of faith and promise, and confess, - Even in the agony and last eclipse, - Some revelation of the Apocalypse! - -XVIII. - - Wise in his day that heathen emperor, - To whom, each morrow, came a slave, and cried— - “Philip, remember thou must die;” no more. - To me such daily voice were misapplied— - Disease guests with me; and each cough, or cramp, - Or aching, like the Macedonian slave, - Is my _memento mori_. ’Tis the stamp - Of God’s true life to be in dying brave. - “I fear not death, but dying”[C]—not the long - Hereafter, sweetened by immortal love; - But the quick, terrible last breath—the strong - Convulsion. Oh, my Lord of breath above! - Grant me a quiet end, in easeful rest— - A sweet removal, on my mother’s breast. - -[C] This is a saying of Socrates. - -XIX. - - October’s gold is dim—the forests rot, - The weary rain falls ceaseless, while the day - Is wrapp’d in damp. In mire of village way - The hedge-row leaves are stamp’d, and, all forgot, - The broodless nest sits visible in the thorn. - Autumn, among her drooping marigolds, - Weeps all her garnered sheaves, and empty folds, - And dripping orchards—plundered and forlorn. - The season is a dead one, and I die! - No more, no more for me the spring shall make - A resurrection in the earth and take - The death from out her heart—O God, I die! - The cold throat-mist creeps nearer, till I breathe - Corruption. Drop, stark night, upon my death! - -XX. - - Die down, O dismal day! and let me live. - And come, blue deeps! magnificently strewn - With coloured clouds—large, light, and fugitive— - By upper winds through pompous motions blown. - Now it is death in life—a vapour dense - Creeps round my window till I cannot see - The far snow-shining mountains, and the glens - Shagging the mountain-tops. O God! make free - This barren, shackled earth, so deadly cold— - Breathe gently forth Thy spring, till winter flies - In rude amazement, fearful and yet bold, - While she performs her custom’d charities. - I weigh the loaded hours till life is bare— - O God! for one clear day, a snowdrop, and sweet air! - -XXI. - - Sometimes, when sunshine and blue sky prevail— - When spent winds sleep, and, from the budding larch, - Small birds, with incomplete, vague sweetness, hail - The unconfirmed, yet quickening life of March,— - Then say I to myself, half-eased of care, - Toying with hope as with a maiden’s token— - “This glorious, invisible fresh air - Will clear my blood till the disease be broken.” - But slowly, from the wild and infinite west, - Up-sails a cloud, full-charged with bitter sleet. - The omen gives my spirit deep unrest; - I fling aside the hope, as indiscreet— - A false enchantment, treacherous and fair— - And sink into my habit of despair. - -XXII. - - O Winter! wilt thou never, never go? - O Summer! but I weary for thy coming; - Longing once more to hear the Luggie flow, - And frugal bees laboriously humming. - Now, the east wind diseases the infirm, - And I must crouch in corners from rough weather. - Sometimes a winter sunset is a charm— - When the fired clouds, compacted, blaze together, - And the large sun dips, red, behind the hills. - I, from my window, can behold this pleasure; - And the eternal moon, what time she fills - Her orb with argent, treading a soft measure, - With queenly motion of a bridal mood, - Through the white spaces of infinitude. - -XXIII. - - Oh, beautiful moon! Oh, beautiful moon! again - Thou persecutest me until I bend - My brow, and soothe the aching of my brain. - I cannot see what handmaidens attend - Thy silver passage as the heaven clears; - For, like a slender mist, a sweet vexation - Works in my heart, till the impulsive tears - Confess the bitter pain of adoration. - Oh, too, too beautiful moon! lift the white shell - Of thy soft splendour through the shining air! - I own the magic power, the witching spell, - And, blinded by thy beauty, call thee fair! - Alas! not often now thy silver horn - Shall me delight with dreams and mystic love forlorn! - -XXIV. - - ’Tis April, yet the wind retains its tooth. - I cannot venture in the biting air, - But sit and feign wild trash, and dreams uncouth, - “Stretched on the rack of a too easy chair.” - And when the day has howled itself to sleep, - The lamp is lighted in my little room; - And lowly, as the tender lapwings creep, - Comes my own mother, with her love’s perfume. - O living sons with living mothers! learn - Their worth, and use them gently, with no chiding - For youth, I know, is quick; of temper stern - Sometimes; and apt to blunder without guiding. - So was I long, but now I see her move, - Transfigured in the radiant mist of love. - -XXV. - - Lying awake at holy eventide, - While in clear mournfulness the throstle’s hymn - Hushes the night, and the great west, grown dim, - Laments the sunset’s evanescent pride: - Lo! behold an orb of silver brightly - Grow from the fringe of sunset, like a dream - From Thought’s severe infinitude, and nightly - Show forth God’s glory in its sacred gleam. - Ah, Hesper! maidenliest star that ere - Twinkled in firmament! cool gloaming’s prime - Cheerer, whose fairness maketh wondrous fair - Old pastorals, and the Spenserian rhyme:— - Thy soft seduction doth my soul enthral - Like music, with a dying, dying fall! - -XXVI. - - There are three bonnie Scottish melodies, - So native to the music of my soul, - That of its humours they seem prophecies. - The ravishment of Chaucer was less whole, - Less perfect, when the April nightingale - Let itself in upon him. Surely, Lord! - Before whom psaltery and clarichord, - Concentual with saintly song, prevail, - There lurks some subtle sorcery, to Thee - And heaven akin, in each woe-burning air! - _Land of the Leal_, and _Bonnie Bessie Lee_, - And _Home, sweet Home_, the lilt of love’s despair. - Now, in remembrance even, the feelings speak, - For lo! a shower of grace is on my cheek. - -XXVII. - - “Thou art wearin’ awa’, Jean, - Like snaw when it’s thaw, Jean; - Thou art wearin’ awa’ - To the land o’ the leal.” - - O the impassable sorrow, mother mine! - Of the sweet, mournful air which, clear and well, - For me thou singest! Never the divine - Mahomedan harper, famous Israfel, - Such rich enchanting luxury of woe - Elicited from all his golden strings! - Therefore, dear singer sad! chant clear, and low, - And lovingly, the bard’s imaginings, - O poet unknown! conning thy verses o’er - In lone, dim places, sorrowfully sweet; - And O musician! touching the quick core - Of pity, when thy skilful closes meet— - My tears confess your witchery as they flow, - Since I, too, _wear_ away like the enduring snow. - -XXVIII. - - Uplift in unparticipated night - Oh indefinable Being! far retired - From mortal ken in uncreated light: - While demonstrating glories unacquired - When shall the wavering sciences evolve - The infinite secret, Thee? What mind shall scan - The tenour of Thy workmanship, or solve - The dark, perplexing destiny of man? - Oh! in the hereafter border-land of wonder, - Shall the proud world’s inveterate tale be told, - The curtain of all mysteries torn asunder, - The cerements from the living soul unrolled? - Impatient questioner, soon, soon shall death - Reveal to thee these dim phantasmata of faith. - -XXIX. - - And thus proceeds the mode of human life - From mystery to mystery again; - From God to God, thro’ grandeur, grief, and strife, - A hurried plunge into the dark inane - Whence we had lately sprung. And is’t for ever? - Ah! sense is blind beyond the gaping clay, - And all the eyes of faith can see it never. - We know the bright-haired sun will bring the day, - Like glorious book of silent prophecy; - Majestic night assume her starry throne; - The wondrous seasons come and go: but we - Die, unto mortal ken for ever gone. - Who shall pry further? who shall kindle light - In the dread bosom of the infinite? - -XXX. - - O thou of purer eyes than to behold - Uncleanness! sift my soul, removing all - Strange thoughts, imaginings fantastical, - Iniquitous allurements manifold. - Make it into a spiritual ark; abode - Severely sacred, perfumed, sanctified, - Wherein the Prince of Purities may abide— - The holy and eternal Spirit of God. - The gross, adhesive loathsomeness of sin, - Give me to see. Yet, O far more, far more, - That beautiful purity which the saints adore - In a consummate Paradise within - The Veil,—O Lord, upon my soul bestow, - An earnest of that purity here below. - - - - -Miscellaneous Poems. - - -A Winter Ramble. - - John Frost, old Nature’s jeweller, had beautified the leas, - And the lustre of his fretwork was twinkling on the trees, - As we ramble o’er the meadows in a meditative ease. - - We had left the town behind us for a roaming holiday, - Beneath an arc of gloom, all dark and indistinct it lay, - And the fog was wreathed about it like a robe of iron-gray. - - But a carpeting of leaflets, and a canopy of blue, - And the mystery of ether as the warming sunshine grew, - Sent a mellow thrill of happiness our eager spirits through. - - And over lanes, where Winter bluff had shook his hoary beard, - Where in the naked hedgerows the broodless nests appear’d, - And the brown leaves of the beech-tree were with silver gloss - veneer’d. - - We wandered and we pondered till half the morn was spent, - And the red orb through the tangled boughs his cunning vigour sent, - And the valley mists all melted at his glance omnipotent. - - Dim on a sloping hill-side, clothed in a misty pall, - Stands a turret grey and hoary, where the ancient ivies crawl, - Their Arab arms round casement, sill, and door, and mould’ring wall. - - And there we halted half-an-hour within a roofless hall, - ’Neath a bower of wildest ivy hanging downwards from the wall, - Bearing in its grand luxuriance a flower funereal. - - There we talked of the gay plumes erst bent to pass the lintel old, - The maidens that were moved to smile at gallant wooers bold, - The jovial nights of brave carouse, the wine-cups manifold. - - And all the faded glories of the mediæval time, - When the age was in its manhood, and the land was in its prime, - And manly deeds were chanted in a bold heroic rhyme. - - Then, plucking each a sprig, bedecked with simple yellow flower, - We scrambled sadly downwards from our old enchanted bower, - And the glory of the sunshine fell upon us like a shower. - - Once more beneath the concave of a clear effulgent sky, - Where flocks of cawing rooks to the mansion wavered by— - A mansion standing coldly ’mid a windy rookery. - - And over breezy mountains, where the poacher, with his gun, - Stood lonely as a boulder-stone ’tween earth and shining sun, - We wandered and we pondered till the winter day was done. - - -The Home-Comer. - - Oh, many a leaf will fall to-night, - As she wanders through the wood! - And many an angry gust will break - The dreary solitude. - I wonder if she’s past the bridge, - Where Luggie moans beneath; - While rain-drops clash in slanted lines - On rivulet and heath. - Disease hath laid his palsied palm - Upon my aching brow; - The headlong blood of twenty-one - Is thin and sluggish now. - ’Tis nearly ten! A fearful night, - Without a single star - To light the shadow on her soul - With sparkle from afar: - The moon is canopied with clouds, - And her burden it is sore;— - What would wee Jackie do, if he - Should never see her more? - Aye, light the lamp, and hang it up - At the window fair and free; - ’Twill be a beacon on the hill - To let your mother see. - And trim it well, my little Ann, - For the night is wet and cold, - And you know the weary, winding way - Across the miry wold. - All drenched will be her simple gown, - And the wet will reach her skin: - I wish that I could wander down, - And the red quarry win— - To take the burden from her back, - And place it upon mine; - With words of kind condolence, - To bid her not repine. - You have a kindly mother, dears, - As ever bore a child, - And heaven knows I love her well - In passion undefiled. - Ah me! I never thought that she - Would brave a night like this, - While I sat weaving by the fire - A web of phantasies. - How the winds beat this home of ours - With arrow-falls of rain; - This lonely home upon the hill - They beat with might and main. - And ’mid the tempest one lone heart - Anticipates the glow, - Whence, all her weary journey done, - Shall happy welcome flow. - ’Tis after ten! Oh, were she here, - Young man altho’ I be, - I could fall down upon her neck, - And weep right gushingly! - I have not loved her half enough, - The dear old toiling one, - The silent watcher by my bed, - In shadow or in sun. - - -My Brown Little Brother of Three. - - “Happy child! - Thou art so exquisitely wild, - I think of thee with many tears, - For what may be thy lot in future years.” - - WORDSWORTH. - - The goldening peach on the orchard wall, - Soft feeding in the sun, - Hath never so downy and rosy a cheek - As this laughing little one. - The brook that murmurs and dimples alone - Through glen, and grove, and lea, - Hath never a life so merry and true - As my brown little brother of three. - From flower to flower, and from bower to bower, - In my mother’s garden green, - A-peering at this, and a-cheering at that, - The funniest ever was seen;— - Now throwing himself in his mother’s lap, - With his cheek upon her breast, - He tells his wonderful travels, forsooth! - And chatters himself to rest. - And what may become of that brother of mine, - Asleep in his mother’s bosom? - Will the wee rosy bud of his being, at last - Into a wild flower blossom? - Will the hopes that are deepening as silent and fair - As the azure about his eye, - Be told in glory and motherly pride, - Or answered with a sigh? - Let the curtain rest: for, alas! ’tis told - That Mercy’s hand benign - Hath woven and spun the gossamer thread - That forms the fabric fine. - Then dream, dearest Jackie! thy sinless dream, - And waken as blythe and as free; - There’s many a change in twenty long years, - My brown little brother of three. - - -The “Auld Aisle”—a Burying-Ground. - - This is my last and farewell place on earth, - In this unlevel square of soft green-sward. - I love it well. Beneath no trailing vine, - No prairie grass, no moaning yew tree’s shade, - Within no hollow hard sarcophagus, - No barrëd tomb, I hope _I_ e’er shall lie; - But, happed with daisy-mingled grass, where oft, - On Sabbath eve, when everything is still, - And every little glen within itself - Is heard to chaunt its masses o’er the sun, - Already shrouded with his blood-stained robes, - Some mindful ones will drop a ready tear - To nurture a white daisy, and will breathe - A gushing prayer of sighs to him below. - _I_ shall not feel their footsteps over _me_; - _I_ shall not hear their long-known voices speak; - For I’ll be dead. Oh! dead! and yet why weep? - Oh! earthly hearts are weak to think of death! - And ’tis a cutting thought to see our hopes - All shivered like a bunch of autumn leaves, - And sunset games, and love—delightful love— - All buried in a grave. Yet it _must_ come. - - The wreck of centuries is buried here; - The very monuments are hoar with age; - The empty tower that sentinels them all - Wails when the gusts wild wander o’er the earth, - And creaks the rusty gate with careless Time. - Methinks I see the silent funeral - Wend slowly up this hill with soulless load. - Backward swings sullen the disusëd gate, - And quiet, with measured steps, they enter here, - And cross the moundy sward, amongst the stones, - To where the red clay gapes. How mournfully - Are the last rites paid to a fleshly frame! - Behold the old man with the sunken eyes - And broken heart. This was his eldest-born. - A black-eyed boy he was, and in his youth - He was his joy and hope. And oft he gazed - Into his laughing face, and dreamed of times - When in _his_ youthful strength he would _him_ shield, - And help him to the stone before the door - In summer time, when streamlets murmured clear. - So he grew up, but scorned the homely ways - Of the grey place of his nativity. - He saw the sun rise from behind the hills, - His well-thumbed book firm clasped in his young hand. - He saw it sink within the breezy glen, - And all the birds shrink from its burning face - To shade in nests, his book firm clasped in hand. - But most he pondered over nature’s book— - The bubbled rill and the green-bladed corn, - The lowly wild-flowers and the leafy trees - Alive with music. His father wondered strange, - And prouder grew of his bold quiet son, - Who spoke without restraint or lowly eye - Unto God’s minister. And he would tell - At other fire-sides of his wondrous ways, - The oft-trimmed lamp when others were indrawn; - Nor did he check the working of the mind - And wearing of the flesh. _He_ knew no harm. - So time grew older still, and he went off, - With paler face and heavier looks, to where - The sons of learning prosecute their toils. - - But here he pined like a transplanted flower - Borne from its native soil. No grass was here, - Where he might lie, and watch the mighty clouds - All floating in the blue. No lark was here, - In love with angels, but the place was lone - And dark and cold. No milkmaid’s song was here, - Hushed when he passed upon the mountain side, - And anxious eye that gazed till he was gone. - And ’mid the throng of battling human kind, - No simple eye nor horny hand sought his, - Or voice, with homely accents, spoke relief. - All was unknown, unheeded, but his books, - Which were his very self, his only friend. - - And rich he was in lore, and strong in hope, - But heaven was panting for an inmate more: - In heaven his place was vacant; as at home. - And time grew older still, and he came home - To see his father, but he ne’er went back. - His body could not hold his restless soul, - That longed, with eagle strength, to pierce the clouds, - And so it burst this yielding bond on earth, - Already, by a lengthened struggle, weak. - His father saw him die. He never left - His bedside; but with eyes that seemed as glazed, - For ever staring at the sharpened face, - He stood and stood and wept not. In that time - His son saw heaven and chided all delay. - His father knew not of the words of blame - That blest his dying breath. He seized the clay, - And clutched it desperately unto his breast. - The arms fell down, nor gave returning press. - And that crush broke the doting father’s heart. - This is the grave beside that white gravestone: - Hold back the nettles while I read its lay:— - - -Epitaph. - - _Beneath me lies the rotting faded mask_ - _Of a young mind that studied heaven well;_ - _Ne’er in the sun of pleasure did he bask,_ - _But loved hope’s shadow and fair virtue’s dell._ - _He died while on the road to yonder sky,_ - _And every one that wanders careless here,_ - _Tread soft, and hark! Is not time hurrying by?_ - _Begone and pray; the Day of Judgment’s near!_ - - I have seen children playing in this place, - Have heard the voice of psalms sound plaintive here, - And sighs commingle with these strains of love, - For memory is dewy with salt tears. - - Yet some lie here unknown to all. They came - Parentless, and they died and buried were - By careless hands, that threw the wormy clods - All hastily upon the coffin lid - And then went home. Perhaps some empty chair, - Like to a last year’s nest, still waits for them. - Perhaps a nightly prayer still ascends - Among the breathings of a family home, - To hasten their return. Let us away - And gather stones and place them at their heads. - - Could all the tales that wait around the graves, - Like volumes of wet sighs, be garnered up: - How hollow would each swelling heap resound. - - Here one who died in mirth, and while the laugh, - The merry laugh of joy did paint his face, - Death frowned, and smote the smiling victim dead. - - Here one who wept to see the flushing sun - Glide reddening from his window bars, and set - To rise again, and dry the silent dew - From his damp grave. - - Here one who lingered long, - And every morn the fields missed knots of flowers - Borne to his bedside. And his eyes grew wild - When the sun’s withering gaze stared in upon them, - And he would press them to his fluttering heart, - And face the mighty orb, defiant-like, - As if to hurl it from the empty sky, - For daring thus to blight his darling flowers. - Poor fellow, he was mad. - - May God forbid - That clownish foot should crush the gentle clay, - Or break the daisy stalks or primrose buds, - That bloom beside the low white marble stone - In yon lone spot. - - -To Jeanette. - - “I did hear you talk - Far above singing; after you were gone, - I grew acquainted with my heart, and searched - What stirred it so! Alas! I found it love.” - - I’ve sung of flowers in loving way, - And pluck’d them too for half a day, - And into posies wrought them, till - Orion glared above the hill: - But never, never saw I one - As fair as thee beneath the sun, - And never, never shall I know - A lovelier where’er I go. - Yet ’tis not for thy beauty, dear - Jeanette, nor yet the sunny cheer - About thy face, I love thee so! - But something of thy soul doth flow - Into my heart, and I am wild - With tender passion as a child. - - I write thy name, and kiss it, dear - Jeanette, in most impulsive fear! - I whisper it into my heart, - And then its music makes me start - In sudden gladness. I am fain - To let the echo die again! - Thy image groweth out of air - Until, entranced, I pause and stare - Into thy dear ideal eyes— - The shadow of God’s paradise. - - I am in love with thee, thou dear - Jeanette, and keep my spirit clear - For thy embrace. It cannot be - That thou wilt keep aloof from me - Like that immortal Florentine - Whom Tasso lov’d. O I would pine - Into a pale accusing dream - To haunt thy pillow, and would seem - So fond and sad, thy heart would fret - For its unkindness, good Jeanette! - - O many a long glad summer day - I laughed at love, and deemed his sway - The tinkle of an idle tongue, - A fancy only to be sung. - But thou all-beautiful! hast more - Of this, the thrilling passion—love— - In one soft tress of plaited gold, - Than blessed Petrarch could unfold. - I love thee, dear Jeanette! I love - Thee, O how dearly! Far above - All singing is my love for thee, - Thou paradise of ecstasy! - Make me immortal with a kiss - Of earnest pressure, and all bliss - Is mine for ever, ever! Dear - Jeanette, beloved, adored in fear! - - -The Poet and his Friend. - - I spent a day—the landmark of a life— - With one, a hero in the realms of rhyme: - Ardent, yet calm—in human wisdoms rife, - And burning to be something in his time. - Through autumn foliage by a river side, - Through glen of ivied trees and hazel dell, - Each heart by its own sunshine glorified, - We wandered wildly wise; till it befel, - Beneath a faded elm, we came upon a well. - - And, sitting by the still translucent water, - In pleasaunce sweet we quaffed the liquid cold; - Lo! as we drank, there passed a fairer daughter - Of Beauty than Fidessa. Then the old— - Yet never old, immortal song of glory, - Breathing of summer bower and emerald lea, - And fountain bubbling coldly—Spenser’s story - Thrilled all our brains to living ecstasy: - Such power had maiden floating onward maidenly. - - And pondered we, above that placid wave, - How we were thrown upon a colder day; - Yet, by the sword of Arthur! quite as brave, - As wondrous willing for the haughty fray - As Arthegal and Guyon. So we rose - And joined our hands in fervent heat, and swore - By old Renown’s endeavours, and by those - Who battled well and won, to dream no more, - But through a sea of fears to struggle for the shore. - - I think no good of him who takes his ease, - As pigeon-livered in the human game - As Braggadocio: on the tranquil seas - All ships sail nobly; but whoe’er is tame - To face the waves when fringed with windy spray, - Is but a coward. Let him live, then rot! - No man shall speak of him, no pilgrim lay - A twist of wild-flowers on the common spot - That marks his meagre dust—the poltroon is forgot. - - But, good friend! we shall fight. Even he who fails - In a great cause is noble. Time will show - The best and worst of it; and while it hails - Some worthy Song-kings of the long-ago, - Perhaps our names will echo with the rest, - And in no feebleness. Meantime, oh fight! - In the thick hurry of the battle press’d, - Clothed on with resolution, the soul’s might— - Be Hector or Achilles!—God defend the right! - - -The Two Streams. - - O cool the summer woods - Of dear Gartshore, where bloom - Soft clouds of white anemones - Among their own perfume. - And clear the little brooklet, - Singing an endless lay, - Winding its nameless waters - Close by the white highway. - And here in sweet sensation, - And soul-uneasy swoon, - I’ve lain for many a golden - Hour of a summer noon. - The cushats _crooned_ around me - Their murmuring amorous song; - And in a brooding drowsiness, - The echoes swooned along; - Till all the sweet sensations - Grew into utter pain, - And I was fain to wander - All sadly home again. - There have been brotherhoods in song, - And human friendships true; - There have been lovers unto death, - Yes, and right many too. - But never in the march of time, - And ne’er in mortal knowing, - From history or nobler rhyme, - Hath there been such constant flowing: - One from mountains far away, - One from glades of emerald shining, - Flowing, flowing evermore - For a delicate combining. - If upon a summer’s day, - When the air is blue and bracing, - You for Merkland take your way, - Sweet uneasy fancies chasing; - You may see the famous grove— - If not famous, then most surely - Ripe for fame, which is but love— - Where they mingle most demurely. - Not in song and babbling play - Which no poet could unravel; - But in tender simple way, - On a bed of golden gravel. - Where I sit I see them now,— - Bothlin with her endless winding - From a mountain’s purple brow, - Sacred contemplation finding; - In still nooks of shady rest, - Gleaming greenly ’neath the holly: - Youth, she says, is often blest - With a touch of melancholy. - Luggie from the orient fields - Wiser is, yet hath a beauty, - Which the snowy conscience yields - To the softened face of duty. - All she does bespeaks a grace, - Yet the grace hath that of sadness - We behold in many a face, - Where we had expected gladness. - But when Bothlin meets her there, - See the change to sudden glory! - Surely such another pair - Never met in classic story. - I could sing for half a day, - And my spirit never weary - Fashioning the vernal lay - With a linnet’s impulse cheery. - But some night in leafy June, - You the place yourself may see; - When the light is in the moon, - Like the passion that’s in me. - - -Evening. - - The evening now is still and calm, - As if sad Eloïsa’s soul - Had breathed a spiritual balm - Throughout the softened whole. - Within the azure of the sky - There shineth not a single star; - But in a soft serenity - The Crescent cometh from afar. - In darker lines the firs that shade - The house of Merkland round and round, - Come out, and from the fragrant glade - No liquid notes resound: - I heard the birds this live-long day, - In sweet unwrinkled blending, - As if this merry month of May - Should never have an ending. - O could I utter thoughts that rise, - O could I sing the tender - Softness of the summer skies, - In all their virgin splendour! - O crescent Moon, like pearlëd bark - To ferry souls to glory; - O silent deepening of the dark - O’er vale and promontory! - Alas, that I should live, and be - A churl in soul, while slowly - God makes the solemn eve, and breathes - A calm thro’ hearts unholy! - - -The Love-Tryst. - - Seven sycamores of wondrous fairness, smooth, - And mealy green of trunk, and murmurous - In multitudinous sun-twinkling leaves, - This valley grace. Three fairer than the rest, - Which in the silent worship of my heart - I fondly call the brothers of Bridgend, - O’er cottage floors when doors are wide for heat - And often on the face of cradled child, - Throw dusky shadows. And when lenient winds - Blow motion, the cool shadows flicker, and play - Upon the floors, and glimpse the countenance - Of the sweet baby, till the mother laughs, - And bending downward, kisses. But of all - The trees that ever tufted hill or vale, - That ever took the breeze or sheltered nest, - Or rung with flowing melody of birds, - The strangest and the dearest, best and first, - Waves audibly upon a windy hill - Above the Luggie. In the front of Spring, - When the first crocus gleams among the grass, - One half shines out full-leaved, the other bare: - And when the Autumn violet hath lost - Its fragrance, and the meadow-hay is mown, - One half shines out full-leaved, the other bare. - There are two trees, whose marriageable boughs - Twine, each with each, and throw a common shade, - A chestnut and an elm. The former opes - Its oily buds whene’er the teeming south - Breathes life and warm intenerating balm, - But fades in early Autumn; while supreme - In vigorous development, the elm - Full-foliaged glimmers till October’s end. - At the twin roots and facing the rich west - A summer seat is rustically carved, - A sylvan shelter from the mid-day sun: - But nor in mid-day, nor when decent eve - Gather her purples have I rested there; - But when thro’ crisp and fleecy clouds the moon - O’er the soft orient sheds a milder dawn, - Then tripping up the dewy lea, with step - Light as an antelope, a maiden came, - And all her radiance in my bosom laid; - And on this seat, while high among the leaves - Rain murmured, and the glory of the moon - Was dimmed, I whispered all my passion-tale. - Ah me, ah me! her silken hair down-slid, - Her smooth comb dropt among the grass, and both - Stooped searching, and her burning cheek met mine: - And starting suddenly upward, with her face - Rosed to the beating temples, meek she gazed, - Half sad, and the blue languish of her eyes - Drooped tearful. And in madness and delight, - I with my left arm zoned her little waist, - And with my right hand smoothed the silken hair - From her fair brow, snow-cold; and, by the doves - That bill and coo in Venus’ pearly car! - There was a touch of lips. Then creeping close - Into my bosom like a little thing - That was confused, she cradled pantingly. - Thus, while the rain was murmuring overhead, - And the out-passioned moon thro’ vaporous gloom - Dipt queenly, whispered I my perilous tale. - Ah me, ah me! a tender answer came; - For with her softling finger-tips she touched - My hand, warm laid upon her heart, and pressed - A meek approval with averted face. - O poet-maker, darling love, sweet love, - Awakener of manhood, and the life - Of life. But let me not like talking fool - Prate all thy virgin whiteness, all thy sweet - Deliciousness, for thou art living yet! - And as the rose that opens to the sun - Its downy leaves, scents sweetest at the core, - So all thy loveliness is but the robe - That clothes a maiden chastity of soul. - - O hasten, hasten down your azure road, - And darken all the golden zones of heaven, - Bright Sun, for I am weary for my love. - - -An Epistle to a Friend. - - Ah well-a-day, for human plans, - And Fancy’s bright creations, - With all the purple-wingéd brood - Of young imaginations! - I’ve tried, this weary winter’s day, - All poignant cares to banish, - By quaffing goblets, rosy-brimm’d, - Of dear poetic Rhenish. - - Not all the sweets of Castaly— - That river Heliconian, - Adorn’d with swans of queenly snow, - Of ancient brood Strymonian; - Not all the maiden Muses nine, - With tresses loosely flowing, - Could magnetise a single line, - Or set my quill a-going; - - Until I thought of thee, dear friend— - Best loved, though long unheeded; - Then forth the virgin pages came, - And quick my fingers speeded. - This very hour I’ll make amends, - This lonely hour quiescent, - When all the stars are in the blue, - ’Mid lustre irridescent. - - And, from the slopes I know right well, - All shagg’d with bending thistle, - The homeless wind comes with a swell, - And enters with a whistle; - Till brightlier glows the cosy fire, - And cheerier my bosom, - In thinking on the shivering woods, - And vales without a blossom. - - You know the Luggie, natal stream!— - On earth to us none dearer— - Where Lady Luna, mirror’d, burns, - With all her handmaids near her. - The time may come when haughty Fame - With laurel shall console us; - Then we shall halo it with song - Till it outflow Pactolus! - - The woods, the vales, the hawthorn dales, - The hoary hamlet Caurnie - Shall be of goodlier report - Than genius-hallowed Ferney. - And though I speak like boaster vain, - I speak not without thinking; - Already on thy noble brow - I see a chaplet twinkling! - - Heaven knows! amid the march of Time - I am a simple dreamer; - Can see more in the patient moon— - Yon radiant crescent-gleamer— - Than all the banner’d pomp of war, - Or progress politician; - Than all the mockeries of rank, - And haughtiness patrician. - - No golden key, however bright, - Can pass the fragrant portal - Of Fame’s grand temple-dome, or make - A simpleton immortal. - Then what is wealth to our desire? - (A burning tear-drop pays us) - A rushlight to the morning star, - To Homer but a Crœsus. - - Then, Willie, though a careless dog, - In brotherhood excuse me, - Nor with neglect, and haughty look, - Most wantonly abuse me. - I’ve suffer’d much and suffer’d long, - Dear heart! since last we ponder’d - On gentle love, within that hall - Where ancient ivies wander’d. - - Nor think my love one jot the less— - Than love I sought in passion— - Because I thus have treated thee - In unpoetic fashion. - Let this suffice for evermore: - I plead a self-conviction, - And thy frank spirit never shall - Increase my sad affliction. - - Then sure I’ll see thee yet again, - Before another morrow - Steals up the east—shall see thee, friend! - In a delightful sorrow. - With silent gratitude, I speak - A blessing on our meeting, - And may the light of friendship touch - Our spirits at the greeting! - - -A Vision of Venice. - - Behold! a waking vision crowns my soul - With beatific radiance, and the light - Of shining hope;—a golden-memoried dream - That clings unto my youth, as clung the strange - Leonine phantom to that mystic man, - Lean Paracelsus. It has grown with me - Like destiny, or that which seems to be - My destiny, ambition: and its glow - Inflames my fancy, as if some clear star - Had burst in silvery light within my brain. - From the smooth hyaline of that far sea - The pictured Adriatic rises, fair - As dream, a kingly-built and tower’d town; - Column and arch and architrave instinct - With delicatest beauty; overwrought - With tracery of interlacèd leaves - For ever blooming on white marble, hush’d - In everlasting summer, windless, cold: - The city of the Doges! - - From the calm - Transparent waters float some thrilling sounds - Of Amphionic music, and the words - Are Tasso’s, where he passions for his love, - That lady Florentine so lily-smooth, - Clothed on with haughtiness! - - At the black stair - Of palace rising shadowy from the wave, - Two singing gondolieri wait a freight - Of loveliness. A tremulous woman, robed - In dazzling satin, and whose dimpled arms, - And milky heaving breasts of living snow - Shine through their veil diaphanous, floats down - From the wide portal; and the ivory prow - Of the soft-cushion’d gondola (as she - Steps lightly from the marble to her place) - Dips, rises, dips again; then through the blue - Swift glides into the sunset. - - Oh, the glow - Of that rich sunset dims whate’er I see - In this my own dear valley! O’er the hills— - Those craggy Euganean hills, whose peaks - Wedge the clear crystalline—a blazonry - Of clouds pavilion’d, folded, interwound - Inextricably, load the breezeless west - With awe and glory. The effulgence gleams - Upon a vision’d Belmont, home of her - Who loved as Shakespeare’s women do; and gleams - Upon those walls wherein Othello’s spear - Stabb’d clinging innocence; where that poor wife, - The love-Cassandra Belvidera, gave - Her soul in martyrdom to love and woe. - - And shall I never that far town behold, - Crested with sparkling columns, fiery towers, - Praxitelean masonry?—behold - VENICE, the mart of nations, ere I die? - By Heaven! her common merchants princes were - Unto the continents; her traffickers - The honourable of the earth! She stood - A crownèd city, and the fawning sea - Licked her white feet; and the eternal sun - Kissed with departing beam her brow of snow! - - * * * * * - - Woe to this Venice, with her crown of pride! - The Lady of the kingdoms, the perfection - Of beauty, and the joy of the whole earth! - Through her pavilions shall the crannying winds - Whistle, and all her borders in the sea - Crumble their Parian wonder. Woe to her, - Whose glorious beauty is a fading flower! - Her sober-suited nightingales, with notes - Of smooth liquidity and softened stops, - Solace the brakes; and ’mid her ancient streets - Tawny, the gleaming and harmonious sea - Makes silvery melody of bygone days. - O white Enchantment! Ocean-spouse of old! - When thy high battlements and bulging domes, - By sunset purpled, trembled in the wave! - Now o’er thy towers the Lord hath spread his hand, - And as a cottage shalt thou be removed; - Like Nineveh, or cloudy Babylon! - - -The Anemone. - - I have wandered far to-day, - In a pleased unquiet way; - Over hill and songful hollow, - Vernal byeways, fresh and fair, - Did I simple fancies follow; - Till upon a hill-side bare, - Suddenly I chanced to see - A little white anemone. - - Beneath a clump of furze it grew; - And never mortal eye did view - Its rathe and slender beauty, till - I saw it in no mocking mood; - For with its sweetness did it fill - To me the ample solitude. - A fond remembrance made me see - Strange light in the anemone. - - One April day when I was seven, - Beneath the clear and deepening heaven, - My father, God preserve him! went - With me a Scottish mile and more; - And in a playful merriment - He deck’d my bonnet o’er and o’er— - To fling a sunshine on his ease— - With tenderest anemones. - - Now, gentle reader, as I live, - This snowy little bloom did give - My being most endearing throes. - I saw my father in his prime; - But youth it comes, and youth it goes, - And he has spent his blithest time: - Yet dearer grown thro’ all to me, - And dearer the anemone. - - So with the spirit of a sage - I pluck’d it from its hermitage, - And placed it ’tween the sacred leaves - Of _Agnes’ Eve_ at that rare part - Where she her fragrant robe unweaves, - And with a gently beating heart, - In troubled bliss and balmy woe, - Lies down to dream of Porphyro. - - Let others sing of that and this, - In war and science find their bliss; - Vainly they seek and will not find - The subtle lore that nature brings - Unto the reverential mind, - The pathos worn by common things, - By every flower that lights the lea, - And by the pale anemone. - - -The Yellowhammer. - - In fairy glen of Woodilee, - One sunny summer morning, - I plucked a little birchen tree, - The spongy moss adorning; - And bearing it delighted home, - I planted it in garden loam, - Where, perfecting all duty, - It flowered in tassel’d beauty. - - When delicate April in each dell - Was silently completing - Her ministry in bud and bell, - To grace the summer’s meeting; - My birchen tree of glossy rind - Determined not to be behind; - So with a subtle power - The buds began to flower. - - And I could watch from out my house - The twigs with leaflets thicken; - From glossy rind to twining boughs - The milky sap ’gan quicken. - And when the fragrant form was green - No fairer tree was to be seen, - All Gartshore woods adorning, - Where doves are always mourning. - - But never dove with liquid wing, - Or neck of changeful gleaming, - Came near my garden tree to sing - Or _croodle_ out its meaning. - But this sweet day, an hour ago, - A yellowhammer clear and low, - In love and tender pity - Thrilled out his dainty ditty. - - And I was pleased, as you may think, - And blessed the little singer: - ‘O fly for your mate to Luggie brink, - Dear little bird! and bring her; - And build your nest among the boughs, - A sweet and cosy little house - Where ye may well content ye, - Since true love is so plenty. - - And when she sits upon her nest, - Here are cool shades to shroud her.’ - At this the singer sang his best, - O louder yet, and louder; - Until I shouted in my glee, - His song had so enchanted me. - No nightingale could pant on - In joy so wise and wanton. - - But at my careless noise he flew, - And if he chance to bring her - A happy bride the summer thro’ - ’Mong birchen boughs to linger, - I’ll sing to you in numbers high - A summer song that shall not die, - But keep in memory clearly - The bird I love so dearly. - - -The Cuckoo. - - Last night a vision was dispelled, - Which I can never dream again; - A wonder from the earth has gone, - A passion from my brain. - I saw upon a budding ash - A cuckoo, and she blithely sung - To all the valleys round about, - While on a branch she swung. - Cuckoo, cuckoo! I looked around, - And like a dream fulfilled, - A slender bird of modest brown, - My sight with wonder thrilled. - I looked again and yet again; - My eyes, thought I, do sure deceive me, - But when belief made doubting vain, - Alas, the sight did grieve me. - For twice to-day I heard the cry, - The hollow cry of melting love; - And twice a tear bedimmed my eye— - I _saw_ the singer in the grove, - I saw him pipe his eager tone, - Like any other common bird, - And, as I live, the sovereign cry - Was not the one I always heard. - - O why within that lusty wood - Did I the fairy sight behold? - O why within that solitude - Was I thus blindly overbold? - My heart, forgive me! for indeed - I cannot speak my thrilling pain: - The wonder vanished from the earth, - The passion from my brain. - - -Fame. - -_A Fragment._ - - O Glorious Fame! next grandest word to God, - Father of all things beautiful and grand, - Of all the thoughts ideal and sublime - That grace the annals of our literature. - Thou stirrer of the heart to noble deeds! - Thou powerful antidote to cringing fear - Of battle, rolling ’mid the billowy smoke - That wreaths its curls blue over flood and field! - In the cold, creaking garret, or beside - The entrance to a theatre, or where - Luxury pillows soft the somnolent head, - Or where the dew-bent daisy droops to kiss - The dark grey eggs of lark, companion sweet! - There thou dost lift their souls above this world, - And teachest them in language fair and wild, - To ope their hearts in strains of poesy. - Ah, noble Fame! how deeply I adore - Thy altar, smelling sweet with fond applause! - Sages may shun, philosophers may scorn; - But, ah! to a young heart, how glorious - The thought that he, by well-earned merit, shall - Be spoken of, yea praised, ’neath the roof-tree - Of peasant, or beneath the monarch’s dome! - That learned men will wonder, and in joy - Will lift their hands and shake astonished heads; - That by the fireside, while the flick’ring lamp - Doth send its shadow-forming light athwart. - The genius young shall read, and read, and read - Until the warning bell strike one short hour, - Then fling it past, and, pillowed on his couch, - Dream of the happy-gifted one that wrote it; - That maidens, high in rank and fair in form, - Shall speak to one another of that man - Who, bathing in the pure Castalian fount, - Arose, and from his form with pearlets clad - Shook off the diamonds in bright profusion, - That, while the clouds do tell their pattering beads, - And through the forest roars the wailing wind - Sporting with the brown leaves that wheel aloft, - A joyous family, seated by a fire - That roars in laughter at the storm without, - Talked of the poet— - - -Honeysuckle. - - Stop! taste the balmy essence of this flower, - That fondly twines about the dark-green fir; - The air is sweet, and, like a mild-eyed saint, - It liveth doing good. The balmy gale - Far wafts its odours to the lowly door - Of yon small cot thatched with the dying heath, - And the old dame doth bless the laden wind. - I do not think that e’er a tender eye - Looked on thee but with love,—that e’er a tongue - Spoke of thee but with blessings and with praise. - Thy lean red shanks cling round the dusty trunk, - And send their white shoots through the brown rough bark, - So true, so fond and frail-like that when one - Looks on thee, his mind’s eye sees round God’s throne - White spirits breathing hymns and fed with love. - Ye sweet, sweet flowers! ye must have mutual love, - For when one stalk, with its own beauty, droops, - With oily leaves and breathing blossoms heavy, - The others haste their sister to upraise, - And, winding round it with affection’s grasp, - Lift it from off the earth’s dark dreaded breast. - How many nosegays have I often culled - Of thee, fair guiltless thief, for even thy name - Tells how thou _sucklest_ nature’s _honeyed_ sweets, - And leav’st her less wherewith to bless the rest. - Thou art not _very_ beauteous; many flowers, - With high-fringed crests and gaudy-spotted leaves, - Outstrip thy homely dress; but tell me one - That blesseth ether with more fragrant smell? - ’Tis ever thus. Furred robes and shining silks - Oft hide a poppy’s smell—a dastard mind; - And homely garments oft adorn a breast - That heaves at pity’s tale and tale of wrong, - And, known by none, yet is a friend to all. - - -Where the Lilies used to Spring. - - When the place was green with the shaky grass, - And the windy trees were high; - When the leaflets told each other tales, - And the stars were in the sky; - When the silent crows hid their ebon beaks - Beneath their ruffled wing— - Then the fairies watered the glancing spot - Where the lilies used to spring! - - When the sun is high in the summer sky, - And the lake is deep with clouds; - When gadflies bite the prancing kine, - And light the lark enshrouds— - Then the butterfly, like a feather dropped - From the tip of an angel’s wing, - Floats wavering on to the glancing spot - Where the lilies used to spring! - - When the wheat is shorn and the burns run brown, - And the moon shines clear at night; - When wains are heaped with rustling corn, - And the swallows take their flight; - When the trees begin to cast their leaves, - And the birds, new-feathered, sing— - Then comes the bee to the glancing spot - Where the lilies used to spring! - - When the sky is grey and the trees are bare, - And the grass is long and brown, - And black moss clothes the soft damp thatch, - And the rain comes weary down, - And countless droplets on the pond - Their widening orbits ring— - Then bleak and cold is the silent spot - Where the lilies used to spring! - - -Snow. - - Flowers upon the summer lea, - Daisies, kingcups, pale primroses— - These are sung from sea to sea, - As many a darling rhyme discloses. - Tangled wood and hawthorn dale - In many a songful snatch prevail; - But never yet, as well I mind, - In all their verses can I find - A simple tune, with quiet flow, - To match the falling of the snow. - - O weary passed each winter day, - And windily howled each winter night; - O miry grew each village way, - And mists enfolded every height; - And ever on the window pane - A froward gust blew down with rain, - And day by day in tawny brown - The Luggie stream came heaving down:— - I could have fallen asleep and dreamed - Until again spring sunshine gleamed. - - And what! said I, is this the mode - That Winter kings it now-a-days? - The Robin keeps its own abode, - And pipes his independent lays. - I’ve seen the day on Merkland hill, - That snow has fallen with a will, - Even in November! Now, alas; - The whole year round we see the grass:— - Ah, winter now may come and go - Without a single fall of snow. - - It was the latest day but one - Of winter, as I questioned thus; - And sooth! an angry mood was on, - As at a thing most scandalous;— - When lo! some hailstones on the pane - With sudden tinkle rang amain, - Till in an ecstasy of joy - I clapp’d and shouted like a boy— - Oh, rain may come and rain may go, - But what can match the falling snow! - - It draped the naked sycamore - On Foordcroft hill, above the well; - The elms of Rosebank o’er and o’er - Were silvered richly as it fell. - The distant Campsie peaks were lost, - And farthest Criftin with his host - Of gloomy pine-trees disappeared, - Nor even a lonely ridge upreared.— - Oh, rain may come and rain may go, - But what can match the falling snow! - - Afar upon the Solsgirth moor, - Each heather sprig of withered brown - Is fringed with thread of silver pure - As slow the soft flakes waver down; - And on Glenconner’s lonely path, - And Gartshore’s still and open strath, - It falleth, quiet as the birth - Of morning o’er the quickening earth.— - Oh, rain may come and rain may go, - But what can match the falling snow! - - And all around our Merkland home - Is laid a sheet of virgin lawn; - On fairer, softer, ne’er did roam - The nimble Oread or Faun. - There is a wonder in the air, - A living beauty everywhere; - As if the whole had ne’er been planned, - But touched by Merlin’s famous wand, - Suddenly woke beneath his hand - To potent bliss in fairy show— - A mighty ravishment of snow! - - -October. - - Sweet Muse and well-beloved, with my decline - Declining, like a rose crushed unawares, - Having too early knowledge of decay, - Too subtle pleasure to behold the tree - Shed its thin foliage on the sluggish stream,— - What a sweet subject for thy silver sounds! - - O for a quill pluck’d from the soaring wing - Of an archangel, dipped in holy dew, - To catch thy latest looks, thou loveliest - October, o’er the many-coloured woods! - October! vastlier disconsolate - Than Saturn guiding melancholy spheres, - Through ante-mundane silence and ripe death. - Ere the last stack is housed, and woods are bare, - And the vermilion fruitage of the brier - Is soaked in mist, or shrivelled up with frost; - Ere warm Spring nests are coldly to be seen - Tenantless, but for rain and the cold snow, - While yet there is a loveliness abroad,— - The frail and indescribable loveliness - Of a fair form Life with reluctance leaves, - Being there only powerful,—while the earth - Wears sackcloth in her great prophetic grief:— - - Then the reflective melancholy soul,— - Aimlessly wandering with slow falling foot - The heath’ry solitude, in hope to assuage - The cunning humour of his malady,— - Loses his painful bitterness, and feels - His own specific sorrows one by one - Taken up in the huge dolour of all things. - - O the sweet melancholy of the time - When gently, ere the heart appeals, the year - Shines in the fatal beauty of decay! - When the sun sinks enlarged on Carronben, - Nakedly visible without a cloud, - And faintly from the faint eternal blue - (That dim, sweet harebell-colour) comes the star - Which evening wears;—when Luggie flows in mist, - And in the cottage windows one by one, - With sudden twinkle household lamps are lit, - What noiseless falling of the faded leaf! - - Sweet on a blossoming summer’s afternoon, - When Fancy plays the wizard in the brain, - Idly to saunter thro’ a lusty wood! - But sweeter far—by how much sweeter, God - Alone hath knowledge—in a pensive mood, - Outstretched on green moss-velvet floss’d with thyme, - To watch the fall o’ the leaf before the moon - Shines out in sweet completion circular. - For when the sunset hath withdrawn its gold - And glimmering, like the surcease - Of rich, low melody, erst inaudible streams - Find voices in their still unwearied flow; - And winds that have been much above the moors - And mountains, have a deadly feel of cold, - Forespeaking clear blue dawns and frosty chill. - - -The Roman Dyke. - - Ah! frail memorial of a thousand years! - Thou seem’st a stranger in a foreign land: - No pitying hand thy fragments, fall’n, uprears, - But useless, graceless, thou art left to stand. - And yet, across this foggy, rain-slash’d wall, - The savage tatoo’d Caledonians slew, - With gory club, the high-nosed Romans, who - With joy retreated at Antonius’ call. - That stone which now I touch has handled been - By brawny Romans, who, in Latin talked - Of their fantastic foes, as, oft-times seen, - With sacred tramp of liberty they stalked. - And have they e’er been slaves? that dyke shall tell: - The Romans, Saxons, Southrons, Swedes, they’ve braved, - And, like proud eagles, scorned to be enslaved; - As freemen now they stand—as freemen then they fell. - On that side scorn the paths of slavery; - Here—kiss the hallowed dust of Liberty! - - - - -Miscellaneous Sonnets. - - -Ezekiel. - - Ezekiel, thus from the Lord God: Behold, - Mount Seir, I am against thee! Desolate, - Most desolate thy cloudy and dark fate. - Between the lips of talkers bad and bold, - Thy towns forsaken, and thy rivers rolled - Thro’ silent wastes, are taken up, and great - The joy at thy high glories ruinate. - While all the earth is wanton, thou art cold, - For thy most cruel lifting of the spear - ’Gainst Israel in her time of consternation. - Slain men shall fill thy mountains, O mount Seir! - Sith thou hast blood pursued, fell tribulation - Shall curse thy blessings, mock’d and undeplored:— - As I live, thou shalt know I am the Lord! - - -The Mavis. - - Sweet Mavis! at this cool delicious hour - Of gloaming, with a pensive quietness - Hushes the odorous air,—with what a power - Of impulse unsubdued, thou dost express - Thyself a spirit! While the silver dew - Holy as manna on the meadow falls, - Thy song’s impassioned clarity, trembling through - This omnipresent stillness, disenthrals - The soul to adoration. First I heard - A low thick lubric gurgle, soft as love, - Yet sad as memory, thro’ the silence poured - Like starlight. But the mood intenser grows, - Precipitate rapture quickens, move on move - Lucidly linked together, till the close. - - -Despondency. - - O Mystery of love and human grief, - And hope, half-prophet ever prone to tears! - My heart is lonely as a withered leaf - Upon the winter tree. The passing years - Are barren to me of all happiness, - And, like a hoary anchorite, I feed - Upon my past, and, _fetisch-like_, it dress - With glory and clear jewels not its own. - O Love, and Childhood! and those happy times - When ignorance was patron to my need, - When every hour was like a linnet flown - In song, and beautiful in simple rhymes. - Would that my feelings knew the quiet flow - Of thy clear waters, Luggie! singing as they go! - - -The Moon. - -I. - - Come, light-foot Lady! from thy vaporous hall, - And, with a silver-swim into the air, - Shine down the starry cressets one and all - From Pleiades to golden Jupiter! - I see a growing tip of silver peep - Above the full-fed cloud, and lo! with motion - Of queenly stateliness, and smooth as sleep, - She glides into the blue for my devotion. - O sovran Beauty! standing here alone - Under the insufferable infinite, - I worship with dazed eyes and feeble moan - Thy lucid persecution of delight. - Come, cloudy dimness! Dip, fair dream, again! - O God! I cannot gaze, for utter pain. - -II. - - With what a calm serenity she smooths - Her way thro’ cloudless jasper sown with stars! - Chaster than virtue, sweeter than sweet truths - Of maidenhood, in Spenser’s knightly wars. - For what is all Belphœbe’s golden hair, - The chastity of Britomart, the love - Of Florimel so faithful and so fair, - To thee, thou Wonder! And yet far above - Thy inoffensive beauty must I hold - Dear Una, sighing for the Red-cross Knight - Thro’ all her losses, crosses manifold. - And when the lordly lion fell in fight, - Who, who can paragon her tearful woe? - Not thou, O Moon! didst ever passion so. - - -The Luggie. - -I. - - Long yearnings had my soul to gaze upon - Fair Italy with atmosphere of fire; - On tawny Spain; on th’ immemorial land - Where Time has dallied with the Parthenon - In beautiful affection and desire. - But when last even, effluently bland, - I saw sweet Luggie wind her amber waters - Thro’ lawns of dew and glens of glimmering green, - And saw the comeliness of Scotland’s daughters, - Their speaking eyes and modest mountain mien,— - I blest the Godhead over all presiding, - Who placed me here, removed from human strife, - Where Luggie, in her clear unwearied gliding, - Is but the image of my inner life. - -II. - - The Avon is a famous rivulet, - The mountain Duddon and the “bonnie Doon” - Flow ever-shining in the sun of song, - While plaintive Yarrow moaneth evermore. - But there is one which I must halo yet - With verse, as with a gleam of morning glory; - Must set its woodland murmurings to tune, - As through summer groves it steals along; - Must gather inspiration from its love - Of visible beauty and traditions hoary, - And spiritual presences sublime. - Dear Luggie! thou are mine by right of birth, - And daily brotherhood and poet’s rhyme. - O could I make thee famous o’er the earth! - -III. - - Pactolus singeth over golden sand; - Scamander, old and blood-empurpled river, - Rolls yet her stream divine; and Castaly - Flows lucid in the light of ancient song; - Whilst thou, sweet Luggie! fairest of this land, - And fair as any of that famous throng, - In pastoral, still loveliness, must be - Bald as a marshy brooklet nameless ever! - Nay, by the spirit of beauty and dear pleasure, - Sure I shall sing thee as my first delight, - Nurse of my soul, companion of my leisure! - And if in aftertime thy waters roll - More worthily, more spiritually bright, - It will be sunshine to my perfect soul. - - -Thomas the Rhymer. - - Listen, O spirit of that ancient bard! - Thou weird Ezekiel of an age of lies - And human fantasy! If ’neath the skies - One being liveth, worthy to be heard, - Whisper the awful _sesame_ that unstarr’d - To thee the riddle of those mysteries, - Dumb evermore to gazing of all eyes - Mortal and uninspired! O thou that warr’d - With man and custom, I do think of thee - As something of a glory, something grand - Beyond what ever satisfied this land - With earnest of a strange divinity, - Penn’d in thy passionately-breathing moods, - Prophetic peopler of old solitudes! - - -The Lime-Tree. - - A Lime-tree broad of bough and rough of trunk - Deepens a shadow, as the evening cool, - Over the Luggie gathering in deep pool - Contemplative, its waters summer-shrunk; - The Lammas floods have sucked away the mould - About its roots, and now in bare sunshine - Like knot of snakes they twine and intertwine - Fantastic implication, fold in fold. - Secure in covert, ’neath the fringing fern - Lurks the bright-speckled trout, untroubled, save - When boyhood with a glorious unconcern - Eagerly plunges in the sleeping wave. - Here the much-musing poet might recapture - The inspiration flown, the vagrant rapture. - - -The Brooklet. - - - O deep unlovely brooklet, moaning slow - Thro’ moorish fen in utter loneliness! - The partridge cowers beside thy loamy flow - In pulseful tremor, when with sudden press - The huntsman flusters thro’ the rustled heather. - In March thy sallow-buds from vermeil shells - Break, satin-tinted, downy as the feather - Of moss-chat that among the purplish bells - Breasts into fresh new life her three unborn. - The plover hovers o’er thee, uttering clear - And mournful—strange, his human cry forlorn: - While wearily, alone, and void of cheer - Thou glid’st thy nameless waters from the fen, - To sleep unsunned in an untrampled glen. - - -Maidenhood. - - A sacred land, to common men unknown, - A land of bowery glades and greenwoods hoary, - Still waters where white stars reflected shone, - And ancient castles in their ivied glory. - Fair knights caparison’d in golden mail, - And maidens whose enchantment was their beauty, - Met but to whisper each the passion-tale, - For love was all their pleasure and their duty. - Here cedar bark, as with a moving will, - Floated thro’ liquid silver, all untended; - Here wrong and baseness ever came to ill, - And virtue with delight was sweetly blended. - This land, dear Spenser! was thy fair creation, - Made thro’ fine glamour of imagination. - - -Sleep. - - O precious Morphia! I sanctify - The soothing power that in a painless swoon - Laps my weak limbs, giving me strength to lie, - Till sacred dawn increases unto noon: - Then when, from highest meridional height, - The sun devolves, and cooling breezes wake, - It is a comfort and divine delight - The weary bed exhausted to forsake, - And bathe my temples in the blessed air. - But when day wanes, and the wind-moaning night - Deepens to darkness, then thy virtue rare, - O dream-creative liquid! brings delight, - Thy silver drops, diffusive, kindly steep - The senses in the golden juice of sleep. - - -The Days of Old Mythology. - - O for the days of old Mythology, - When dripping Naiads taught their streams to glide! - When, ’mid the greenery, one would oft-times spy - An Oread tripping with her face aside. - The dismal realms of Dis by Virgil sung, - Whose shade led Dante, in his virtue bold, - All the sad grief and agony among, - O’er Acheron, that mournful river old, - Ev’n to the Stygian tide of purple gloom! - Pan in the forest making melody! - And far away where hoariest billows boom, - Old Neptune’s steeds with snorting nostrils high! - These were the ancient days of sunny song; - Their memory yet how dear to the poetic throng. - - -Discontentment. - - O if we never knew the genial hour - When Happiness sits by us like a god - Dispensing treasures, we would never know - The barren sadness of the common day, - The weariness, and discontentment sour - At human life—its ordinary load - Of hopes deferred, and presences that flow - Smilingly past us, syrens in the dream - Of young imagination, fancy-fed. - O I have seen such beauties with the gleam - Of fairy sunshine on them, and I long - Upon their bosoms this my life away - To dally, like the lover in a song, - And be a luting swain, Arcadian bred! - - -Snow. - - But yestermorn the February snow - Lay printless as the heaven upon this field, - And, with a rapture in my bosom born, - In sudden awe and reverence I kneeled - Alone beneath the glory of the sky - And omnipresent deity. To-day - The spirit of the beautiful no more - Over the wondering earth, in earnest glow - Touches to beauty all the landscape grey,— - Bringing a vision from her palace high - To this sublunar planet. Now, forlorn - As Ariadne on Cretan shore - For many bitter-cold and weary days - She knoweth not her old immortal ways. - - -The Thrush. - - One Candlemas, a gentle day of Spring, - I was abroad betimes while the red sun - Rose large and stately with a purpled ring - Of mist about him, and a mantle dun. - Thro’ naked boughs he ominously glared, - Till, soul-constrained, in sudden awe I stood, - And with a Persian’s adoration stared. - When lo! from a round beech-tree in the wood, - The only tree to which the brown leaves clung, - A mavis warbled forth his mellow lay; - And ever as his ditty clear he sung - The passion swelled his breast of downy grey. - Dear bird! since then thy melody I know - The boldest in intent, the fullest in its flow. - - -Stars. - - O cold blue night, and deep the cloudless sky - Gleams, sown with lucid keen and trembling stars;— - A ravishment of glory shines on high, - And the rapt soul yearns upward. Fiery Mars - Shines with a baleful redness in the west; - While mail’d Orion, frozenly severe, - Stands like an armed skeleton opprest - With centuries of sentinelship. Thro’ clear - Smooth ether the keen-silvered Plough upheaves - Its seven diamonds; and far away - Poor Cassiopeia for her daughter grieves— - Andromeda cold-touch’d by windy spray, - While faintly watching with tear-misted eyne, - Perseus flying shoreward o’er the gleaming brine. - - - - -My Epitaph. - - - _Below lies one whose name was traced in sand. - He died, not knowing what it was to live: - Died, while the first sweet consciousness of manhood - And maiden thought electrified his soul, - Faint beatings in the calyx of the rose. - Bewildered reader! pass without a sigh, - In a proud sorrow! There is life with God, - In other kingdom of a sweeter air; - In Eden every flower is blown:_ AMEN. - - _DAVID GRAY._ - _September 27, 1861._ - - - - -Gray’s Monument. - - -At the inauguration of the Monument erected to the Poet’s Memory in the -“Auld Aisle” Burying Ground, Kirkintilloch, July 29, 1865, Mr. Bell -said:— - -David Gray, was born on the 29th January, 1838, and reared in his -father’s house here at Merkland till he reached his fourteenth year. -His parents, seeing as they did his disposition and his genius, thought -they might find means to bring up their son for the Church. With that -view he was sent into Glasgow, and as he required funds to aid him -in the prosecution of his studies, at that very early age he became -a pupil-teacher in the city. He contrived also to attend the famous -University there for four successive sessions. But during all that time -his mind was brimming over with poetry, which rose like a rising tide -above his Latin, above his Greek, above his theological studies. He had -a very ardent and ambitious fancy; he had high aspirations; he had an -earnest belief that he was born to be a poet, and to attain fame. In -one so young it might have been thought that this was an overweening -conception of his own powers. But in reality it was not. A poet is -also a _vates_ or prophet, and there is no reason why he should not -be permitted sometimes to prophesy of himself. David Gray prophesied -of himself that his name would yet be known to his fellow-countrymen -as a poet and a teacher, for every true poet is a true teacher. In -May, 1860, when he had so far completed his studies in Glasgow, and -had arrived at the age of nearly 22, he started alone for London. -He had read of the great literary world of the metropolis, and he -was fired with an ambition to mingle in it and to make himself, if -possible, known to some of the men there. He was fortunate in forming -the acquaintance, very soon after going to London, of Mr. Monckton -Milnes, now Lord Houghton, who at once formed a correct appreciation -of the poet’s character and genius. Lord Houghton has himself put it -upon record that he found in David Gray what appeared to him to be the -making of a great man. He has also recorded of him that upon first -seeing him he was strongly reminded of the poet Shelley. Gray had a -light, well-built form; he had a full brow and an out-looking eye; -and he had a sensitive, melancholy mouth. So Lord Houghton speaks of -him. He formed also in London other acquaintances of value, including -Mr. Oliphant, then Private Secretary to Lord Elgin, now member for the -Stirling Burghs. As to Sydney Dobell, the poet, I do not know that he -actually formed the personal acquaintance of that gentleman; but he had -frequent correspondence with Mr. Dobell, and received from him valuable -letters, and suggestions, and assistance. He formed the acquaintance -of a very estimable woman—Miss Marian James—herself an authoress of -great reputation. Nearer at home he had already attained the friendly -companionship of some whom he valued much. I am delighted to see two of -those gentlemen present to-night—Mr. W. Freeland, David Gray’s early -and attached friend, now of the _Herald_ Office, Glasgow, and Mr. -James Hedderwick, himself a poet and an editor of great reputation. He -had not, however, been long in London till he was seized with a cold -which rapidly assumed the character of consumption. Lord Houghton and -others, feeling deeply interested in him, got him sent to the South of -England for a time; but the disease making rapid progress, David Gray -was seized with an irresistible home-sickness, and notwithstanding -all the kindness, and all the attention of his friends in the South, -in January, 1861, he made his re-appearance at his father’s house -down there in Merkland. He lived there from January, 1861, to the 3d -December of the same year, when he died. That is the brief record of -this young poet’s life—almost all the incidents in it, all the events -connected with it. But who can record, or who shall attempt to record -the thousand thoughts and emotions that passed through his mind, that -illuminated his fancy, and that kindled his genius? Who shall say how -these familiar woods, and fields, and glens, and streams were to him -dearer, a thousand times dearer and more romantic, than any woods, -or fields, or glens, or streams in any other part of the world. No -man but a true poet has that warm affection for home scenes, for his -country, for his native land, for the friends of his youth; no man but -a true poet has those sentiments in their height and in their depth; -and if ever a man entertained them, the poetical remains of David -Gray prove that he had them in a deep, pathetic, and most earnest -manner. Upon his death-bed, within three days of his death, he received -what appears to me to be a particularly beautiful letter from Marian -James, breathing that _alma gentile_ which none but a refined and pure -woman possesses. I never saw David Gray, but I have seen to-night the -humble room in which he was born; I have seen the home in which he -was afterwards reared—a simple, rural house, belonging to a simple, -honest, and upright family, such a family as Scotland is always proud -of—and of such families I am proud to know that Scotland possesses her -thousands and tens of thousands. I saw his mother to-night, and was -deeply impressed with the apparent simplicity and earnestness of her -character. I owe her my gratitude and my thanks for her presenting -me with a book which belonged to her son, and which contains many -of his private markings. I shall always retain it as a valuable and -most esteemed possession. David Gray’s poetical susceptibility was of -the most conspicuous description. He had a most refined perception -of the beautiful; he had a perception of an interminable vista of -beauty and truth. He had noble and pure thoughts, and he has been -enabled to express those noble and pure thoughts in very noble and -pure language. “The Luggie” is a most remarkable poem, containing -many very fine passages, inspired partially, no doubt, by a careful -perusal of Thomson’s “Seasons” and Wordsworth’s “Excursion,” and not, -therefore, so entirely original as some of the author’s subsequent -poems; but with passages breaking out in it every now and then which -neither Thomson nor Wordsworth suggested, and which are entirely the -conceptions of David Gray’s own genius. “The Luggie,” as has been well -said, “may not possess in itself much to attract the painter’s eye, -but it has sufficed for a poet’s love.” The series of sonnets entitled -“In the Shadows”—written by the poet during his last illness—many of -them bearing relation to his own condition, his own life, and his -own prospects—appear to me to possess a solemn beauty not surpassed -by many of the finest passages in Tennyson’s “In Memoriam,” totally -distinct and unlike the “In Memoriam,” but as genuine, as sincere, -as heart-stirring, and often as poetical. In the author’s own words, -they admit you “to the chancel of a dying poet’s mind;” you feel when -you are reading these sonnets that they are written in the sure and -immediate prospect of death; but they contain thoughts about life, -about the past, and about the future, most powerful and most beautiful. -I am not going to ask you to take all this for granted. I think, -upon an occasion like this, we ought to show some little reason for -the faith that is in us; and, if it will not fatigue you too much, I -propose in a few minutes to read two or three of those passages and -those sonnets which strike me as worthy of all admiration. I feel -confident that these works are destined to take their place amongst -standard poetical works in the library of every man of literary taste. -We are here, as you have said, upon the occasion of the erection of -a monument to David Gray—a monument erected on the spot where he is -buried, in a beautiful old churchyard, standing upon the brow of a -hill, from which a fine and extensive view of the surrounding valley -and hills is commanded. It is a granite monument, and will last, I -hope, for centuries. I am sure that in this neighbourhood it will -often be visited by persons who feel something like kindred emotions -with David Gray, and they will be proud of this neighbourhood that -it gave birth in that humble cottage to a man who has added so much -charm to its natural scenery. It was felt at the same time, I believe, -by the gentlemen in Glasgow who took the principal charge of it, -that a great or imposing monument was not the thing that was wanted. -A plain, simple, enduring record of respect and esteem was what was -wished. Therefore, although the fund I know could have been trebled, -quadrupled, with ease, it was thought that when a certain moderate -sum was obtained that was enough, and by the aid of the genius of -our townsman, Mr. Mossman, I venture to say that an appropriate and -suitable monument has now been erected on that spot. I may mention -that I find the names in the list of subscribers very varied. Among -the Glasgow subscribers I find the name of Mrs. Nichol, widow of the -late Professor of Astronomy in our University, who I know took a great -interest in David Gray from first to last, and who, I know also, -with her usual benevolence, aided in smoothing his dying pillow. I -find the name of William Logan, one of the most earnest and attached -friends that David Gray ever had; I find Lord Houghton; I find Mr. -Bailie Cochrane; I find Mr. Stirling of Keir, the Hon. Julia Fane, the -Dowager Duchess of Sutherland, Mr. Macmillan, Mr. MacLehose, Mr. J. -A. Campbell, Mr. Hutton, editor of the London _Spectator_, and many -other names. Now Lord Houghton was requested to write an appropriate -inscription for this monument. I know it was a labour of love with -him, and I know he was anxious to write such an epitaph as would be -thought suitable both here and elsewhere; and I venture to say, and I -hope you will agree with me, that he has admirably succeeded in the -simplicity and truth of that epitaph which has now been engraved on the -monument. Such is the young man whose fame we shall not willingly let -die, because they who read his works aright derive moral improvement -and intellectual benefit from them—because, young as he was when he -died, he cherished pure and noble thoughts, and because he has left -those pure and noble thoughts as a record to us of his life, and as an -incentive to us to endeavour to cherish similar thoughts. Therefore, -we owe him a debt of gratitude; and, therefore, without attempting to -raise him upon a pinnacle too high—for his life was cut short before -the highest aims of his ambition were attained—let it go forth that no -true poet in this land, be his position in life what it may, be his -birth humble or great—no true poet, no great teacher of the hearts of -men, will ever find an ungrateful country in Scotland, as long as it -remembers its great poets—as long as it knows that it is the land -of Burns. In “The Luggie,” which you are aware is a descriptive and -pastoral poem, there are varied moods of thought. There is a good deal -of mere description of beautiful scenery, but that, whilst exquisitely -done, is also intermingled with many thoughts and feelings which add a -richness to the charm of the poet’s description. No mere description -of external and lifeless nature, unless brought home to the heart by -allusions to human emotion, can ever produce a very strong effect. But -David Gray seems to have understood admirably how to combine those -two qualities in his descriptive picture, and whilst he describes -beautiful external nature, he always takes care at the same time to -attract and touch the feelings. I am happy to know that David Gray -died in true Christian faith, and amity with all men. I know from the -esteemed clergyman who attended him weekly for many a day, that he had -those true Christian sentiments which become a man, and most of all -become a great man, upon his death-bed. I have had the very greatest -satisfaction in being present to-night. I felt it to be an honour to -be requested to come here and express my sentiments on such a subject. -It is an honour which I feel, and it is a pleasure which I feel still -more, for when a man has passed through this world now for a good -many years, as I have done, there can be nothing dearer to his heart -than expressing sympathy with the great and good, and feeling those -expressions of sympathy reflected from the hearts and the eyes of a -sympathising audience. - - The Monument bears the following inscription:— - - - THIS MONUMENT OF - AFFECTION, ADMIRATION, AND REGRET, - IS ERECTED TO - - DAVID GRAY, - - THE POET OF MERKLAND, - BY FRIENDS FROM FAR AND NEAR, - DESIROUS THAT HIS GRAVE SHOULD BE REMEMBERED - AMID THE SCENES OF HIS RARE GENIUS - AND EARLY DEATH, - AND BY THE LUGGIE, NOW NUMBERED WITH THE STREAMS - ILLUSTRIOUS IN SCOTTISH SONG. - - _Born 29th January, 1838; Died 3rd December, 1861._ - - GLASGOW: PRINTED AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS. - - - - - _Second Edition, just ready, in Extra Fcap. 8vo, Price 6s. 6d._ - - _OLRIG GRANGE_, - - A Poem in Six Books. Edited by HERMANN KUNST, - Philol. Professor. - - - The Tatler in Cambridge. - “One could quote for ever, if a Foolscap Sheet were - inexhaustible; but I must beg my Readers, if they want to have - a great Deal of Amusement, as well as much Truth beautifully - put, to go and order the Book at once. I promise them they will - not repent.” - - The Examiner. - “The demoralizing influence of our existing aristocratic - institutions, on the most gifted and noblest members of - the aristocracy has never been so subtly and so powerfully - delineated as in ‘Olrig Grange.’” - - The Pall Mall Gazette. - “‘Olrig Grange,’ whether the work of a raw or of a ripe - versifier, is plainly the work of a ripe and not a raw student - of life and nature.... It has dramatic power of a quite - uncommon class; satirical and humorous observation of a class - still higher, and a very pure and healthy, if perhaps a little - too scornful, moral atmosphere.” - - The Spectator. - “The story is told in powerful and suggestive verse. The - composition is instinct with quick and passionate feeling, - to a degree that attests the truly poetic nature of the man - who produced it.... The author exhibits a fine and firm - discrimination of character, a glowing and abundant fancy, a - subtle eye to read the symbolism of nature, and great wealth - and mastery of language, and he has employed it for worthy - purposes.” - - The Academy. - “The pious self-pity of the worldly mother, and the despair of - the worldly daughter, are really brilliantly put.” - - “The story is worked out with quite uncommon power.” - - New Poem, by the author of “OLRIG GRANGE.” - - _AUSTEN LYELL_. A Poem in Six Books. Extra - Fcap. 8vo, Cloth. [_Immediately._ - - _SONGS AND FABLES_. By the late PROFESSOR - W. MACQUORN RANKINE, with 10 Illustrations by J. B. - (Mrs. Blackburn). Extra Fcap. 8vo, Cloth. - [_Immediately._ - - GLASGOW: JAMES MACLEHOSE, PUBLISHER TO THE UNIVERSITY. - LONDON: MACMILLAN AND CO. - - - - - _In One Vol., Extra Fcap. 8vo., Cloth, Price 5s._ - - _HILLSIDE RHYMES_: - - AMONG THE ROCKS HE WENT, - AND STILL LOOKED UP TO SUN AND CLOUD - AND LISTENED TO THE WIND. - - Scotsman. - “Let anyone who cares for fine reflective poetry read for - himself and judge. Besides the solid substance of thought which - pervades it, he will find here and there those quick insights, - those spontaneous felicities of language which distinguish the - man of natural power from the man of mere cultivation.... Next - to an autumn day among the hills themselves commend us to poems - like these, in which so much of the finer breath and spirit of - those pathetic hills is distilled into melody.” - - Glasgow Herald. - “The author of ‘Hillside Rhymes’ has lain on the hillsides, - and felt the shadows of the clouds drift across his half-shut - eyes. He knows the sough of the fir-trees, the crooning of the - burns, the solitary bleating of the moorland sheep, the quiet - of a place where the casual curlew is his only companion, and a - startled grouse-cock the only creature that can regard him with - enmity or suspicion. The silence of moorland nature has worked - into his soul, and his verse helps a reader pent within a city - to realize the breezy heights, the sunny knolls, the deepening - glens, or the slopes aglow with those crackling flames with - which the shepherds fire the heather.” - - - - - _Just Ready, in Extra Fcap. 8vo, Cloth, Price 7s. 6d._ - - _HANNIBAL_: - - - A Historical Drama. By JOHN NICHOL, B.A., Oxon., - Professor of English Language and Literature in the University - of Glasgow. - - The Saturday Review. - “After the lapse of many centuries, an English Poet is found - paying to the great Carthaginian the worthiest poetical tribute - which has as yet, to our knowledge, been offered to his noble - and stainless name.” - - The Athenæum. - “Probably the best and most accurate conception of Hannibal - ever yet given in English. Professor Nichol has done a really - valuable work. From first to last of the whole five acts there - is hardly a page that sinks to the level of mediocrity.” - - The Dublin Telegraph. - “Professor Nichol has just given us a volume which bids fair to - open a new era in poetry, and secures to the author a position - among the first poets of the day.” - - The Morning Post. - “Glasgow has good reason to be proud of her Professor of - English Literature, in which he now takes a prominent place by - right of his admirable classic drama. Criticism will award him - a regal seat on Parnassus, and laurel leaves without stint.” - - GLASGOW: JAMES MACLEHOSE, PUBLISHER TO THE UNIVERSITY. - LONDON: MACMILLAN AND CO. - - - - - -End of Project Gutenberg's The Poetical Works of David Gray, by David Gray - -*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE POETICAL WORKS OF DAVID GRAY *** - -***** This file should be named 55716-0.txt or 55716-0.zip ***** -This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: - http://www.gutenberg.org/5/5/7/1/55716/ - -Produced by Larry B. 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