Dig for us; and present us, in the shape
Of virgin ore, that gold which we, by pains
Fruitless as those of aery alchemists,
Seek from the torturing crucible. There lies
Around us a domain where you have long
Watched both the outward course and inner
heart:

Give us, for our abstractions, solid facts;
For our disputes, plain pictures. Say what man
He is who cultivates yon hanging field;
What qualities of mind she bears who comes,
For morn and evening service, with her pail,
To that green pasture; place before our sight
The family who dwell within yon house
Fenced round with glittering laurel; or in that
Below, from which the curling smoke ascends.
Or rather, as we stand on holy earth,
And have the dead around us, take from them
Your instances; for they are both best known,
And by frail man most equitably judged.
Epitomise the life; pronounce, you can,
Authentic epitaphs on some of these
Who, from their lowly mansions hither brought,
Beneath this turf lie mouldering at our feet:
So, by your records, may our doubts be solved;
And so, not searching higher, we may learn
To prize the breath we share with human kind;
And look upon the dust of man with awe."

The Priest replied-"An office you impose
For which peculiar requisites are mine;
Yet much, I feel, is wanting-else the task
Would be most grateful. True indeed it is
That they whom death has hidden from our
sight

Are worthiest of the mind's regard; with these
The future cannot contradict the past:
Mortality's last exercise and proof

Is undergone; the transit made that shows
The very Soul, revealed as she departs.
Yet, on your first suggestion, will I give,
Ere we descend into these silent vaults,
One picture from the living.

You behold,
High on the breast of yon dark mountain, dark
With stony barrenness, a shining speck
Bright as a sunbeam sleeping till a shower
Brush it away, or cloud pass over it;
And such it might be deemed-a sleeping sun-
beam;

But 'tis a plot of cultivated ground,
Cut off, an island in the dusky waste;
And that attractive brightness is its own.
The lofty site, by nature framed to tempt
Amid a wilderness of rocks and stones
The tiller's hand, a hermit might have chosen,
For opportunity presented thence

Far forth to send his wandering eye o'er land
And ocean, and look down upon the works,
The habitations, and the ways of men,
Himself unseen! But no tradition tells
That ever hermit dipped his maple dish
In the sweet spring that lurks 'mid yon green
fields;

And no such visionary views belong

To those who occupy and till the ground,
High on that mountain where they long have
dwelt

A wedded pair in childless solitude.
A house of stones collected on the spot,
By rude hands built, with rocky knolls in frout,

Backed also by a ledge of rock, whose crest
Of birch-trees waves over the chimney top:
A rough abode-in colour, shape, and size,
Such as in unsafe times of border-war
Might have been wished for and contrived, to
elude

The eye of roving plunderer-for their need
Suffices; and unshaken bears the assault
Of their most dreaded foe, the strong South-west
In anger blowing from the distant sea.
-Alone within her solitary hut;

There, or within the compass of her fields,
At any moment may the Dame be found,
True as the stock-dove to her shallow nest

And to the grove that holds it. She beguiles
By intermingled work of house and field
The summer's day, and winter's; with success
Not equal, but sufficient to maintain,
Even at the worst, a smooth stream of content,
Until the expected hour at which her Mate
From the far-distant quarry's vault returns;
And by his converse crowns a silent day
With evening cheerfulness. In powers of mind,
In scale of culture, few among my flock
Hold lower rank than this sequestered pair:
But true humility descends from heaven;
And that best gift of heaven hath fallen on them;
Abundant recompense for every want.
-Stoop from your height, ye proud, and copy
these!

Who, in their noiseless dwelling-place, can hear
The voice of wisdom whispering scripture texts
For the mind's government, or temper's peace;
And recommending for their mutual need,
Forgiveness, patience, hope, and charity!"

"Much was I pleased," the grey-haired
Wanderer said,

"When to those shining fields our notice first
You turned; and yet more pleased have from
your lips

Gathered this fair report of them who dwell
In that retirement; whither, by such course
Of evil hap and good as oft awaits
A tired way-faring man, once I was brought
While traversing alone yon mountain pass.
Dark on my road the autumnal evening fell,
And night succeeded with unusual gloom,
So hazardous that feet and hands became
Guides better than mine eyes-until a light
High in the gloom appeared, too high, me-
thought,

For human habitation; but I longed
To reach it, destitute of other hope.

I looked with steadiness as sailors look

On the north star, or watch-tower's distant lamp,

And saw the light-now fixed-and shifting

Come,' said the Matron, to our poor abode;
Those dark rocks hide it!' Entering, I beheld
A blazing fire-beside a cleanly hearth
Sate down; and to her office, with leave asked,
The Dame returned.

Or ere that glowing pile
Of mountain turf required the builder's hand
Its wasted splendour to repair, the door
Opened, and she re-entered with glad looks,
Her Helpmate following. Hospitable fare,
Frank conversation, made the evening's treat:
Need a bewildered traveller wish for more?
But more was given; I studied, as we sate
By the bright fire, the good Man's form, and
face

Not less than beautiful; an open brow
Of undisturbed humanity; a cheek
Suffused with something of a feminine hue;
Eyes beaming courtesy and mild regard;
But, in the quicker turns of the discourse,
Expression slowly varying, that evinced
A tardy apprehension. From a fount
Lost, thought I, in the obscurities of time,
But honoured once, those features and that

mien

May have descended, though I see them here.
In such a man, so gentle and subdued,
Withal so graceful in his gentleness,
A race illustrious for heroic deeds,
Humbled, but not degraded, may expire.
This pleasing fancy (cherished and upheld
By sundry recollections of such fall
From high to low, ascent from low to high,
As books record, and even the careless mind
Cannot but notice among men and things)
Went with me to the place of my repose.

On what, for guidance in the way that leads
To heaven, I know, by my Redeemer taught.'
The Matron ended-nor could I forbear
To exclaim-'O happy! yielding to the law
Of these privations, richer in the main !-
While thankless thousands are opprest and
clogged

By ease and leisure; by the very wealth
And pride of opportunity made poor;
While tens of thousands falter in their path,
And sink, through utter want of cheering
light;

For you the hours of labour do not flag ;
For you each evening hath its shining star,
And every sabbath-day its golden sun.'

"Yes!" said the Solitary with a smile That seemed to break from an expanding heart,

"The untutored bird may found, and so con

struct,

And with such soft materials line, her nest
Fixed in the centre of a prickly brake,
That the thorns wound her not; they only

guard.

Powers not unjustly likened to those gifts
Of happy instinct which the woodland bird
Shares with her species, nature's grace some-
times

Upon the individua! doth confer

Among her higher creatures born and trained
To use of reason. And, I own that, tired
Of the ostentatious world-a swelling stage
With empty actions and vain passions stuffed,
And from the private struggles of mankind
Hoping far less than I could wish to hope,
Far less than once I trusted and believed-
I love to hear of those who, not contending
Nor summoned to contend for virtue's prize,

Roused by the crowing cock at dawn of Miss not the humbler good at which they aim,

day,

I yet had risen too late to interchange

A morning saluation with my Host,
Gone forth already to the far-off seat

Of his day's work. Three dark mid-winter

months

Pass,' said the Matron, and I never see,
Save when the sabbath brings its kind release,
My Helpmate's face by light of day. He quits
His door in darkness, nor till dusk returns.
And, through Heaven's blessing, thus we gain
the bread

For which we pray; and for the wants provide
Of sickness, accident, and helpless age.
Companions have I many; many friends,
Dependents, comforters-my wheel, my fire,
All day the house-clock ticking in mine ear,
The cackling hen, the tender chicken brood,

Blest with a kindly faculty to blunt
The edge of adverse circumstance, and turn
Into their contraries the petty plagues
And hindrances with which they stand beset.
In early youth, among my native hills,
I knew a Scottish Peasant who possessed
A few small crofts of stone-encumbered
ground;

Masses of every shape and size, that lay
Scattered about under the mouldering walls
Of a rough precipice; and some, apart,
In quarters unobnoxious to such chance,
As if the moon had showered them down in
spite.
But he repined not.

Though the plough was

scared By these obstructions, 'round the shady stones A fertilising moisture,' said the Swain,

sioner

Brought yesterday from our sequestered dell
Here to lie down in lasting quiet, he,
If living now, could otherwise report
Of rustic loneliness: that grey-haired Orphan-
So call him, for humanity to him
No parent was-feelingly could have told,
In life, in death, what solitude can breed
Of selfishness, and cruelty, and vice;
Or, if it breed not, hath not power to cure.
-But your compliance, Sir, with our request
My words too long have hindered."

Undeterred,
Perhaps incited rather, by these shocks,
In no ungracious opposition, given
To the confiding spirit of his own
Experienced faith, the reverend Pastor said,
Around him looking; "Where shall I begin?
Who shall be first selected from my flock
Gathered together in their peaceful fold?"
He paused-and having lifted up his eyes
To the pure heaven, he cast them down again
Upon the earth beneath his feet; and spake :-

"To a mysteriously-united pair
This place is consecrate; to Death and Life,
And to the best affections that proceed
From their conjunction; consecrate to faith
In him who bled for man upon the cross;
Hallowed to revelation; and no less
To reason's mandates; and the hopes divine
Of pure imagination;-above all,
To charity, and love, that have provided,
Within these precincts, a capacious bed
And receptacle, open to the good
And evil, to the just and the unjust;
In which they find an equal resting-place:
Even as the multitude of kindred brooks
And streams, whose murmur fills this hollow
vale,

Whether their course be turbulent or smooth,
Their waters clear or sullied, all are lost
Within the bosom of yon crystal Lake,
And end their journey in the same repose!
And blest are they who sleep; and we that
know,

While in a spot like this we breathe and walk,
That all beneath us by the wings are covered
Of motherly humanity, outspread

And gathering all within their tender shade,
Though loth and slow to come! A battle-field,
In stillness left when slaughter is no more,
With this compared, makes a strange spectacle!
A dismal prospect yields the wild shore strewn
With wrecks, and trod by feet of young and old
Wandering about in miserable search

Of friends or kindred, whom the angry sea
Restores not to their prayer! Ah! who would
think

That all the scattered subjects which compose

Earth's melancholy vision through the space
Of all her climes-these wretched, these de-
praved,

To virtue lost, insensible of peace,
From the delights of charity cut off,

To pity dead, the oppressor and the opprest:
Tyrants who utter the destroying word,
And slaves who will consent to be destroyed-
Were of one species with the sheltered few,
Who, with a dutiful and tender hand,
Lodged, in a dear appropriated spot,
This file of infants; some that never breathed
The vital air; others, which, though allowed
That privilege, did yet expire too soon,
Or with too brief a warning, to admit
Administration of the holy rite

That lovingly consigns the babe to the arms
Of Jesus, and his everlasting care.
These that in trembling hope are laid apart;
And the besprinkled nursling, unrequired
Till he begins to smile upon the breast
That feeds him; and the tottering little-one
Taken from air and sunshine when the rose
Of infancy first blooms upon his cheek;
The thinking, thoughtless, school-boy; the bold
youth

Of soul impetuous, and the bashful maid
Smitten while all the promises of life
Are opening round her; those of middle age,
Cast down while confident in strength they
stand,

Like pillars fixed more firmly, as might seem,
And more secure, by very weight of all
That, for support, rests on them; the decayed
And burthensome; and lastly, that poor few
Whose light of reason is with age extinct;
The hopeful and the hopeless, first and last,
The earliest summoned and the longest spared-
Are here deposited, with tribute paid
Various, but unto each some tribute paid;
As if, amid these peaceful hills and groves,
Society were touched with kind concern,
And gentle Nature grieved that one should
die;'

Or, if the change demanded no regret,
Observed the liberating stroke-and blessed.

And whence that tribute? wherefore these
Not from the naked Heart alone of Man
regards?
(Though claiming high distinction upon earth
As the sole spring and fountain-head of tears,
His own peculiar utterance for distress
Or gladness)-No," the philosophic Priest
Continued, "tis not in the vital seat
Of feeling to produce them, without aid
From the pure soul, the soul sublime and pure :
With her two faculties of eye and ear,
The one by which a creature, whom his sins
Have rendered prone, can upward look to
heaven;

The other that empowers him to perceive
The voice of Deity, on height and plain,
Whispering those truths in stillness, which the
WORD,

To the four quarters of the winds, proclaims.
Not without such assistance could the use
Of these benign observances prevail :
Thus are they born, thus fostered, thus main-
tained;

And by the care prospective of our wise

BOOK SIXTH.

For one, who, though of drooping mien, had yet By poets skilled in nature's secret ways