FROM THE VILLAGE PATRIARCH.' 21
HERE oft, with fading cheek and thoughtful brow,
Wanders the youth-town-bred, but desert-born,
Too early taught life's deepening woes to know,
He wakes in sorrow with the weeping morn,
And gives much labor for a little corn.
In smoke and dust, from hopeless day to day,
He sweats, to bloat the harpies of the soil,
Who jail no victim, while his pangs can pay.
Untaxing rent, and trebly taxing toil,
They make the labor of his hands their spoil,
And grind him fiercely; but he still can get
A crust of wheaten bread, despite their frowns;
They have not sent him like a pauper yet
For Workhouse wages, as they send their clowns;
Such tactics do not answer yet in towns.
Nor have they gorged his soul. Thrall though he be,
Of brutes who bite him while he feeds them, still
He feels his intellectual dignity,
Works hard, reads usefully, with no mean skill
Writes, and can reason well of good and ill.
He hoards his weekly groat. His tear is shed
For sorrows which his hard-worn hand relieves.
Too poor, too proud, too just, too wise to wed,
(For slaves enough already toil for thieves,)
How gratefully his growing mind receives
The food which tyrants struggle to withhold!
Though hourly ills his every sense invade
Beneath the cloud that o'er his home is rolled,
He yet respects the power which man hath made,
Nor loathes the despot-humbling sons of trade.
But, when the silent Sabbath-day arrives,
He seeks the cottage, bordering on the moor,
Where his forefathers passed their lowly lives
Where still his mother dwells, content though poor,
And ever glad to meet him at the door.
Oh, with what rapture he prepares to fly
From streets and courts, with crime and sorrow strewed,
And bids the mountain lift him to the sky!
How proud, to feel his heart not all subdued!
How happy to shake hands with Solitude!
Still, Nature, still he loves thy uplands brown
That rock, that o'er his father's freehold towers!
And strangers, hurrying through the dingy town,
May know his workshop by its sweet wild flowers.
Cropped on the Sabbath from the hedge-side bowers,
The hawthorn blossom in his window droops;
Far from the headlong stream and lucid air
The pallid alpine rose to meet him stoops,
As if to soothe a brother in despair,
Exiled from Nature and her pictures fair.
E'en winter sends a poesy to his jail,
Wreathed of the sunny celandine - the brief,
Courageous windflower, loveliest of the frail
The hazel's crimson star the woodbine's leaf-
The daisy with its half-closed eye of grief-
Prophets of fragrance, beauty, joy, and song!
O THOU, Futurity, our hope and dread,
Let me unveil thy features, fair or foul!
Thou, who shalt see the grave untenanted.
And commune with the re-embodied soul!
Tell me thy secrets, ere thy ages roll
Their deeds, that yet shall be on earth, in heaven
And in deep hell, where rabid hearts with pain
Must purge their plagues, and learn to be forgiven!
Show me the beauty that shall fear no stain,
And still, through age-long years, unchanged remain !
As one who dreads to raise the pallid sheet
Which shrouds the beautiful and tranquil face
That yet can smile, but never more shall meet,
With kisses warm, his ever-fond embrace;
So, I draw nigh to thee, with timid pace,
And tremble, though I long to lift thy veil.
LOVE of the celandine and primrose meek!
Star of the leafless hazel! where art thou?
Where is the windflower, with its modest cheek?
Larch! hast thou dashed from thy denuded brow
Blossoms, that stole their rose-hues from the glow
Of Even, blushing into dreams of love?
Flowers of the wintry beam and faithless sky!
Gems of the withered bank and shadeless grove!
Ye are where he who mourns you soon must lie;
Beneath the shroud ye slumber, tranquilly;
But not for ever. Yet a sudden hour
Shall thaw the spotless mantle of your sleep,
And bid it, melted into thunder, pour
From mountain, waste, and fell, with foamy sweep,
Whelming the flooded plain in ruin deep.
Yes, little silent minstrels of the wild,
Your voiceless song shall touch the heart again!
And shall no morning dawn on Sorrow's child?
Shall buried mind for ever mute remain
Beneath the sod, from which your beauteous strain Shall yet arise in music, felt, not heard?
No! Faith, Hope, Love, Fear, Gladness, Frailty, all, Forbid that man should perish. Like the bird
That soars and sings in Nature's festival,
Our souls shall rise and fear no second fall
Our adoration strike a lyre divine!
It is the flower which (pious rustics say)
The Virgin-mother on her bosom wore.
It hoards no dew-drop, like the cups of May,
But, rich as sunset, when the rain is o'er,
Spreads flamy petal from a burning core;
Which, if morn weep, their sorrowing beams upfold,
To wake and brighten, when bright noon is near.
'A jolly place,' said he, 'in times of old,
But something ails it now: the place is curst.'
'Hart-Leap Well,' by WORDSWORTH.
SOME dreams we have are nothing else but dreams,
Unnatural and full of contradictions;
Yet others of our most romantic schemes
Are something more than fictions.
It might be only on enchanted ground;
It might be merely by a thought's expansion;
But in the spirit, or the flesh, I found
An old deserted Mansion.
A residence for woman, child, and man,
A House, but under some prodigious ban
Of excommunication.
Unhinged the iron gates half open hung,
Jarred by the gusty gales of many winters,
That from its crumbled pedestal had flung
One marble globe in splinters.
No dog was at the threshold, great or small;
No pigeon on the roof- no household creature
No cat demurely dozing on the wall
Not one domestic feature.
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