Of culture and the inspiring aid of books, Or haply by a temper too severe, Or a nice backwardness afraid of sname) Nor having e'er, as life advanced, been led By circumstance to take unto the height
The measure of themselves, these favoured Beings, All but a scattered few, live out their time, Husbanding that which they possess within,
And go to the grave, unthought of. Strongest minds Are often those of whom the noisy world
Hears least; else surely this Man had not left His graces unrevealed and unproclaimed. But, as the mind was filled with inward light, So not without distinction had he lived, Beloved and honoured-far as he was known. And some small portion of his eloquent speech, And something that may serve to set in view The feeling pleasures of his loneliness, The doings, observations, which his mind Had dealt with-I will here record in verse; Which, if with truth it correspond, and sink Or rise as venerable Nature leads, The high and tender Muses shall accept With gracious smile, deliberately pleased, And listening Time reward with sacred praise. Among the hills of Athol he was born; There, on a small hereditary farm, An unproductive slip of rugged ground, His Father, with a numerous offspring, dwelt ; A virtuous household, though exceeding poor! Pure livers were they all, austere and grave, And fearing God; the very children taught Stern self-respect, a reverence for God's word, And an habitual piety, maintained
With strictness scarcely known on English ground.
From his sixth year, the Boy of whom I speak, In summer, tended cattle on the hills;
But, through the inclement and the perilous days Of long-continuing winter, he repaired,
To the afar off school, that stood alone, Sole building on a mountain's dreary edge, Remote from sight of city spire, or sound Of minster clock! From that bleak tenement He, many an evening, to his distant home In solitude returning, saw the hills
Grow larger in the darkness; all alone Beheld the stars come out above his head,
And travelled through the wood, with no one near To whom he might confess the things he saw.
So the foundations of his mind were laid. In such communion, not from terror free, While yet a child, and long before his time, Had he perceived the presence and the power
Of greatness; and deep feelings had impressed Great objects on his mind with portraiture And colour so distinct that on his mind They lay like substances, and almost seemed To haunt the bodily sense. He had received
A precious gift; for, as he grew in years,
With these impressions would he still compare
All his remembrances, thoughts, shapes, and forms; And, being still unsatisfied with aught
Of dimmer character, he thence attained
An active power to fasten images
Upon his brain; and on their pictured lines Intensely brooded, even till they acquired The liveliness of dreams. Nor did he fail, While yet a child, with a child's eagerness Incessantly to turn his ear and eye
On all things which the moving seasons brought To feed such appetite-nor this alone Appeased his yearning:-in the after-day Of boyhood, many an hour in caves forlorn, And mid the hollow depths of naked crags He sate, and even in their fixed lineaments, Or from the power of a peculiar eye, Or by creative feeling overborne, Or by predominance of thought oppressed, Even in their fixed and steady lineaments He traced an ebbing and a flowing mind, Expression ever varying!
He had small need of books; for many a tale Traditionary, round the mountains hung, And many a legend, peopling the dark woods, Nourished Imagination in her growth, And gave the mind that apprehensive power By which she is made quick to recognise The moral properties and scope of things. But eagerly he read, and read again, Whate'er the minister's old shelf supplied; The life and death of martyrs, who sustained, With will inflexible, those fearful pangs Triumphantly displayed in records left Of persecution, and the Covenant-times Whose echo rings through Scotland to this hour! And there, by lucky hap, had been preserved A straggling volume, torn and incomplete, That left half-told the preternatural tale, Romance of giants, chronicle of fiends,
Profuse in garniture of wooden cuts
Strange and uncouth; dire faces, figures dire,
Sharp-kneed, sharp-elbowed, and lean-ankled too,
With long and ghostly shanks--forms which once seca Could never be forgotten!
Where Fear sate thus, a cherished visitant.
Was wanting yet the pure delight of love By sound diffused, or by the breathing air, Or by the silent looks of happy things, Or flowing from the universal faco
Of earth and sky. But he had felt the power Of Nature, and already was prepared, By his intense conceptions, to receive Deeply the lesson deep of love which he, Whom Nature, by whatever means, has taught To feel intensely, cannot but receive.
From early childhood, even, as hath been said, From his sixth year, he had been sent abroad In summer to tend herds; such was his task Thenceforward till the later day of Youth. O then what soul was his, when on the tops Of the high mountains, he beheld the sun Rise up, and bathe the world in light! He looked- Ocean and earth, the solid frame of earth
And ocean's liquid mass, beneath him lay
In gladness and deep joy. The clouds were touched, And in their silent faces did he read Unutterable love. Sound needed none, Nor any voice of joy; his spirit drank The spectacle: sensation, soul, and form, All melted into him; they swallowed up His animal being; in them did he live, And by them did he live; they were his life. In such access of mind, in such high hour Of visitation from the living God,
Thought was not; in enjoyment it expired. No thanks he breathed, he proffered no request; Rapt into still communion that transcends The imperfect offices of prayer and praise, His mind was a thanksgiving to the Power That made him; it was blessedness and love!
A Herdsman on the lonely mountain tops, Such intercourse was his, and in this sort Was his existence oftentimes possessed. O then how beautiful, how bright, appeared The written promise! Early had he learned To reverence the volume that displays
The mystery, the life which cannot die; But in the mountains did he feel his faith. There did he see the writing; all things there Breathed immortality, revolving life, And greatness still revolving; infinite: There littleness was not; the least of things Seemed infinite; and there his spirit shaped
Her prospects, nor did he believe,-he saw. What wonder of his being thus became Sublime and comprehensive! Low desires,
Low thoughts had there no place; yet was his heart Lowly; for he was meek in gratitude,
Oft as he called those ecstasies to mind,
And whence they flowed; and from them he acquired Wisdom, which works thro' patience; thence he learned In many a calmer hour of sober thought
To look on Nature with a humble heart, Self-questioned where it did not understand, And with a superstitious eye of love.
So passed the time; yet to the nearest town He duly went with what small overplus His earnings might supply, and brought away The book that most had tempted his desires While at the stall he read. Among the hills He gazed upon that mighty orb of song, The divine Milton. Lore of different kind, The annual savings of a toilsome life, His School-master supplied; books that explain The purer elements of truth involved
In lines and numbers, and, by charm severe (Especially perceived where nature droops And feeling is suppressed), preserve the mind Busy in solitude and poverty.
These occupations oftentimes deceived The listless hours, while in the hollow vale, Hollow and green, he lay on the green turf In pensive idleness. What could he do, With blind endeavours, in that lonesome life, Thus thirsting daily? Yet, still uppermost, Nature was at his heart as if he felt,
Though yet he knew not how, a wasting power In all things which from her sweet influence Might tend to wean him. Therefore with her hues, Her forms, and with the spirit of her forms, He clothed the nakedness of austere truth. While yet he lingered in the rudiments Of science, and among her simplest laws, His triangles-they were the stars of heaven, The silent stars! Oft did he take delight To measure the altitude of some tall crag That is the eagle's birth-place, or some peak Familiar with forgotten years, that shows Inscribed upon its visionary sides, The history of many a winter storm, Or obscure records of the path of fire.
And thus before his eighteenth year was told. Accumulated feelings pressed his heart
With an increasing weight; he was o'erpowered By Nature; by the turbulence subdued
Of his own mind; by mystery and hope, And the first virgin passion of a soul Communing with the glorious universe.
Full often wished he that the winds might rage When they were silent: far more fondly now Than in his earlier season did he love
Tempestuous nights-the conflict and the sounds That live in darkness. From his intellect And from the stillness of abstracted thought He asked repose; and, failing oft to gain The peace required, he scanned the laws of light Amid the roar of torrents, where they send From hollow clefts up to the clearer air A cloud of mist, that in the sunshine frames A lasting tablet-for the observer's eye Varying its rainbow hues. But vainly thus, And vainly by all other means, he strove To mitigate the fever of his heart.
In dreams, in study, and in ardent thought, Thus even from childhood upward was he reared; For intellectual progress wanting much Doubtless, of needful help-yet gaining more, And every moral feeling of his soul
Strengthened and braced, by breathing in content The keen, the wholesome, air of poverty, And drinking from the well of homely life. -But, from past liberty, and tried restraints, He now was summoned to select the course Of humble industry that promised best To yield him no unworthy maintenance. The mother strove to make her son perceive
With what advantage he might teach a school
In the adjoining village; but the Youth,
Who of this service made a short essay,
Found that the wanderings of his thoughts were then A misery to him; that he must resign
A task he was unable to perform.
That stern yet kindly spirit, who constrains The Savoyard to quit his naked rocks,
The free-born Swiss to leave his narrow vales, (Spirit attached to regions mountainous Like their own stedfast clouds) did now impel His restless mind to look abroad with hope. -An irksome drudgery seems it to plod on, Through dusty ways, in storm, from door to door, A vagrant Merchant bent beneath his load. Yet do such travellers find their own delight; And their hard service, deemed debasing now, Gained merited respect in simpler times;
When squire, and priest, and they who round them dwelt
In rustic sequestration-all dependent
Upon the PEDLAR'S toil-supplied their wants,
Or pleased their fancies, with the wares he brought.
Not ignorant was the Youth that still no few
Of his adventurous countrymen were led By perseverance in this track of life To competence and ease :-to him it offered Attractions manifold;-and this he chose. He asked his parents' blessing, they bestowed
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