The wassail1 round, in good brown bowls,
Garnished with ribbons, blithely trowls.2
There the huge sirloin reeked; hard by
Plum-porridge stood, and Christmas pie:
Nor failed old Scotland to produce,
At such high tide, her savoury goose.
Then came the merry masquers in,
And carols roared with blithesome din ;
If unmelodious was the song,
It was a hearty note, and strong.
Who lists may in their mumming3 see
Traces of ancient mystery; +
White shirts supplied the masquerade,
And smutted cheeks the visors5 made;
But oh! what masquers, richly dight,6
Can boast of bosoms half so light!
England was merry England, when
Old Christmas brought his sports again.
'Twas Christmas broached the mightiest ale;
'Twas Christmas told the merriest tale;
A Christmas gambol oft could cheer
The poor man's heart through half the year.
THE OMNIPRESENCE OF GOD.
THOU art, O God! the life and light
Of all this wondrous world we see;
Its glow by day, its smile by night,
Are but reflections caught from thee:
Where'er we turn thy glories shine,
And all things fair and bright are thine.
1 Wassail-according to Webster, from the Anglo-Saxon was hæl, healthliquor a beverage formerly much used at feasts.
2 Trowls-or trolls-moves about, goes round.
3 Mumming from the German mumme, a mask-masking, or performing in
Ancient mystery-A mystery was a sort of dramatic performance, on some religious subject, common in the dark ages.
5 Visor-from the Latin visus, through the French visière-a mask to protect the face, forming part of the helmet; also the upper part of the same, which was perforated to see through-hence the name.
• Dight-from the Anglo-Saxon gediht, set in order-dressed, deckt.
When day, with farewell beam, delays
Among the opening shades of even,
And we can almost think we gaze
Through golden vistas1 into heaven;
Those hues, that mark the sun's decline,
So soft, so radiant, Lord! are thine.
When night, with wings of starry gloom,
O'ershadows all the earth and skies,
Like some dark, beauteous bird, whose plume
Is sparkling with unnumbered eyes;
That sacred gloom, those fires divine,
So grand, so countless, Lord! are thine.
When youthful spring around us breathes,
Thy spirit warms her fragrant sigh;
And every flower the summer wreathes,
Is born beneath that kindling eye:
Where'er we turn thy glories shine,
And all things fair and bright are thine.
GRONGAR HILL."
SILENT Nymph!3 with curious eye,
Who, the purple evening, lie+
On the mountain's lonely van,
Beyond the noise of busy man,
Painting fair the form of things,
While the yellow linnet sings;
Or the tuneful nightingale
Charms the forest with her tale;
1 Vista-from the Italian vistà, a sight-a view or prospect seen through an opening.
2 Grongar Hill claims a high place among descriptive poems. It is vivid, clear, and picturesque, which qualities may in part be due to the writer's profession, which was, in early youth, that of a painter. Dr. Johnson says of this popular poem:-"The scenes which it displays are so pleasing, the images which they raise so welcome to the mind, and the reflections of the writer so consonant to the general sense and experience of mankind, that when it is once read, it will be read again."
3 Silent nymph!-The poet here calls in painting to aid poetry-her "sister muse"-in depicting the landscape. It may be, however, remarked that there is no classical muse of Painting.
4 The grammar halts here; it should be "liest" to be consistent with "thy various hues" afterwards.
Come, with all thy various hues,
Come, and aid thy sister muse;
Now, while Phoebus riding high,
Gives lustre to the land and sky!
Grongar Hill1 invites my song,
Draw the landscape bright and strong;
Grongar! in whose mossy cells,
Sweetly musing, Quiet dwells;
Grongar! in whose silent shade,
For the modest muses made,
So oft I have, the evening still,
At the fountain of a rill,
Sat upon a flowery bed,
With my hand beneath my head,
While strayed my eyes o'er Towy's flood,
Over mead and over wood,
From house to house, from hill to hill,
Till Contemplation had her fill.
About his chequered sides I wind,
And leave his brooks and meads behind,
And groves and grottoes, where I lay,
And vistas shooting beams of day.
Wide and wider spreads the vale,
As circles on2 a smooth canal:
The mountains round-unhappy fate
Sooner or later, of all height-
Withdraw their summits from the skies,
And lessen as the others3 rise.
Still the prospect wider spreads,
Still it widens, widens still,
And sinks the newly-risen hill.
Now I gain the mountain's brow:
What a landscape lies below!
No clouds, no vapours, intervene ;
But the gay, the open scene,
Does the face of nature show
In all the hues of heaven's bow;
And, swelling to embrace the light,
Spreads around beneath the sight.
Grongar Hill-an eminence in Caermarthenshire, near the banks of the Towy. * Wide and wider, &c.-i. e. as the traveller mounts the hill the limits of his prospect extend as circles, &c.
The others—the others which lie beyond, and which come into view as you ascend the hill.
Old castles on the cliffs arise,
Proudly towering in the skies;
Rushing from the woods, the spires
Seem from hence ascending fires;
Half his beams Apollo sheds
On the yellow mountain-heads,
Gilds the fleeces of the flocks,
And glitters on the broken rocks.
Below me trees unnumbered rise,
Beautiful in various dyes :
The gloomy pine, the poplar blue,
The yellow beech, the sable yew:
The slender fir that taper grows,
The sturdy oak with broad-spread boughs;
And, beyond the purple grove,
Haunt of Phillis, queen of love!
Gaudy as the opening dawn,
Lies a long and level lawn,
On which a dark hill, steep and high,
Holds and charms the wandering eye.
Deep are his feet1 in Towy's flood,
His sides are clothed in waving wood,
And ancient towers crown his brow,
That cast an awful look below!
Whose ragged walls the ivy creeps,
And with her arms from falling keeps:
So both a safety from the wind
On mutual dependence find.
'Tis now the raven's bleak abode,
'Tis now th' apartment of the toad;
And there the fox securely feeds,
And there the poisonous adder breeds,
Concealed in ruins, moss, and weeds;
While, ever and anon, there falls
Huge heaps of hoary mouldered walls.
Yet time has seen, that lifts the low,
And level lays the lofty brow,
Has seen this broken pile complete,
Deep are his feet-Though this is a common-place metaphor in itself, yet its use here in pointing out the precise situation of the hill is very effective. 2 There falls huge heaps-This is a very anomalous, but perhaps not entirely ungrammatical form; at least Shakspere writes "there is tears for his love," which has met with defenders.
Big with the vanity of state:
But transient is the smile of fate!
A little rule, a little sway,
A sunbeam in a winter's day,
Is all the proud and mighty have
Between the cradle and the grave.
And see the rivers, how they run
Through woods and meads, in shade and sun!
Sometimes swift, sometimes slow,
Wave succeeding wave, they go
A various journey to the deep,
Like human life, to endless sleep!
Thus is nature's vesture wrought,
To instruct our wandering thought;
Thus she dresses green and gay,
To disperse our cares away.
Ever charming, ever new,
When will the landscape tire the view?
The fountain's fall, the river's flow,
The woody valleys, warm and low,
The windy summit, wild and high,
Roughly rushing on the sky!
The pleasant seat, the ruined tower,
The naked rock, the shady bower;
The town and village, dome and farm,
Each gives each a double charm,
As pearls1 upon an Ethiop's arm.
See on the mountain's southern side
Where the prospect opens wide,
Where the evening gilds the tide,
How close and small the hedges lie!
What streaks of meadows cross the eye!
A step, methinks! may pass the stream,
So little distant dangers seem:
So we mistake the future's face,2
Eyed through Hope's deluding glass;
1 As pearls, &c.-One of the happiest similes to be met with in poetryterse, brief, and particularly ingenious.
2 It has been both asserted and denied, that this passage suggested the well known lines near the beginning of Campbell's " Pleasures of Hope:"— "'Tis distance lends enchantment to the view,
And robes the mountain in its azure hue."
|