AN EVENING SCENE, ON THE SAME SUBJECT.
UP! up! my friend, and clear your looks;
Why all this toil and trouble?
Up! up! my friend, and quit your books,
Or surely you'll grow double.
The sun, above the mountain's head,
A freshening lustre mellow
Through all the long green fields has spread,
His first sweet evening yellow.
Books! 'tis a dull and endless strife:
Come, hear the woodland linnet,
How sweet his music! on my life
There's more of wisdom in it.
And hark! how blithe the throstle sings!
He, too, is no mean preacher:
Come forth into the light of things,
Let Nature be your teacher.
She has a world of ready wealth,
Our minds and hearts to bless
Spontaneous wisdom breathed by health,
Truth breathed by cheerfulness.
One impulse from a vernal wood
May teach you more of man,
Of moral evil and of good,
Than all the sages can.
Sweet is the lore which Nature brings⚫
Our meddling intellect
Mis-shapes the beauteous forms of things:
-We murder to dissect.
Enough of science and of art;
Close up these barren leaves;
Come forth, and bring with you a heart
That watches and receives.
TO THE SPADE OF A FRIEND.
COMPOSED WHILE WE WERE LABOURING TOGETHER IN HIS
SPADE! with which Wilkinson hath tilled his lands,
And shaped these pleasant walks by Emont's side,
Thou art a tool of honour in my hands;
I press thee, through the yielding soil, with pride.
Rare master has it been thy lot to know;
Long hast thou served a man to reason true;
Whose life combines the best of high and low,
The toiling many and the resting few;
Health, quiet, meekness, ardour, hope secure,
And industry of body and of mind;
And elegant enjoyments, that are pure
As Nature is;-too pure to be refined.
Here often hast thou heard the Poet sing
In concord with his river murmuring by;
Or in some silent field, while timid Spring
Is yet uncheered by other minstrelsy.
Who shall inherit thee when death has laid
Low in the darksome cell thine own dear lord?
That man will have a trophy, humble spade!
A trophy nobler than a conqueror's sword.
If he be one that feels, with skill to part
False praise from true, or greater from the less,
Thee will he welcome to his hand and heart,
Thou monument of peaceful happiness!
With thee he will not dread a toilsome day,
His powerful servant, his inspiring mate!
And, when thou art past service, worn away,
Thee a surviving soul shall consecrate.
His thrift thy uselessness will never scorn;
An heir-loom in his cottage wilt thou be :-
High will he hang thee up, and will adorn
His rustic chimney with the last of thee!
ON ONE OF THE COLDEST DAYS OF THE CENTURY.
I must apprise the Reader that the Stoves in North Germany generally have the impression of a galloping Horse upon them, this being part of the Brunswick Arms.
A FIG for your languages, German and Norse!
Let me have the song of the kettle;
And the tongs and the poker, instead of that horse
That gallops away with such fury and force
On this dreary dull plate of black metal.
Here's a fly, a disconsolate creature! perhaps
A child of the field or the grove;
And, sorrow for him! this dull treacherous heat
Has seduced the poor fool from his Winter retreat,
And he creeps to the edge of my stove.
Alas! how he fumbles about the domains
Which this comfortless oven environ!
He cannot find out in what track he must crawl,
Now back to the tiles, and now back to the wall,
And now on the brink of the iron.
Stock-still there he stands like a traveller bemazed;
The best of his skill he has tried;
His feelers methinks I can see him put forth
To the east and the west, and the south and the north;
But he finds neither guide-post nor guide.
See his spindles sink under him, foot, leg, and thigh;
His eye-sight and hearing are lost;
Between life and death his blood freezes and thaws;
And his two pretty pinions of blue dusky gauze
Are glued to his sides by the frost.
No brother, no friend has he near him--while I
Can draw warmth from the cheek of my Love;
As blest and as glad in this desolate gloom,
As if green summer grass were the floor of my room,
And woodbines were hanging above.
Yet, God is my witness, thou small helpless thing!
Thy life I would gladly sustain
Till Summer comes up from the south, and with crowds
Of thy brethren a march thou shouldst sound through the clouds
And back to the forests again!
CHARACTER OF THE HAPPY WARRIOR.
WHO is the happy Warrior?
Whom every man in arms should wish to be?
-It is the generous spirit, who, when brought
Among the tasks of real life, hath wrought
Upon the plan that pleased his childish thought:
Whose high endeavours are an inward light
That make the path before him always bright:
Who, with a natural instinct to discern
What knowledge can perform, is diligent to learn;
Abides by this resolve, and stops not there,
But makes his moral being his prime care;
Who, doomed to go in company with pair,
And fear, and bloodshed, miserable train!
Turns his necessity to glorious gain;
In face of these doth exercise a power
Which is our human nature's highest dower;
Controls them and subdues, transmutes, bereaves
Of their bad influence, and their good receives;
By objects, which might force the soul to abate
Her feeling, rendered more compassionate;
Is placable-because occasions rise
So often that demand such sacrifice:
More skilful in self-knowledge, even more pure.
As tempted more; more able to endure,
As more exposed to suffering and distress;
Thence, also, more alive to tenderness.
"Tis he whose law is reason; who depends
Upon that law as on the best of friends;
Whence, in a state where men are tempted still
To evil for a guard against worse ill,
And what in quality or act is best
Doth seldom on a right foundation rest,
He fixes good on good alone, and owes
To virtue every triumph that he knows:
-Who, if he rise to station of command,
Rises by open means; and there will stand
On honourable terms, or else retire,
And in himself possess his own desire;
Who comprehends his trust, and to the same
Keeps faithful with a singleness of aim;
And therefore does not stoop, nor lie in wait
For wealth, or honours, or for worldly state;
Whom they must follow; on whose head must fall,
Like showers of manna, if they come at all:
Whose power shed round him in the common strife,
Or mild concerns of ordinary life,
A constant influence, a peculiar grace;
But who, if he be called upon to face
Some awful moment to which Heaven has joined Great issues, good or bad for human kind,
Is happy as a lover; and attired
With sudden brightness, like a man inspired;
And, through the heat of conflict, keeps the law
In calmness made, and sees what he foresaw;
Or if an unexpected call succeed,
Come when it will, is equal to the need:
-He who, though thus endued as with a sense
And faculty for storm and turbulence,
Is yet a soul whose master-bias leans
To homefelt pleasures and to gentle scenes;
Sweet images! which, wheresoe'er he be,
Are at his heart; and such fidelity
It is his darling passion to approve;
More brave for this, that he hath much to love:
Tis, finally, the man, who, lifted high,
Conspicuous object in a nation's eye,
Or left unthought of in obscurity,-
Who, with a toward or untoward lot,
Prosperous or adverse, to his wish or not,
Plays, in the many games of life, that one
Where what he most doth value must be won :
Whom neither shape of danger can dismay,
Nor thought of tender happiness betray;
Who, not content that former worth stand fast
Looks forward, persevering to the last,
From well to better, daily self-surpast.
Who, whether praise of him must walk the earth
For ever, and to noble deeds give birth,
Or he must go to dust without his fame,
And leave a dead unprofitable name,
Finds comfort in himself and in his cause:
And, while the mortal mist is gathering, draws
His breath in confidence of Heaven's applause:
This is the happy Warrior; this is he
Whom every man in arms should wish to be.
A POET'S EPITAPH.
ART thou a Statesman, in the van
Of public business trained and bred?
-First learn to love one living man;
Then mayst thou think upon the dead
A Lawyer art thou?-draw not nigh;
Go, carry to some other place
The hardness of thy coward eye,
The falsehood of thy sallow face.
Art thou a man of purple cheer?
A rosy man, right plump to see?
Approach; yet, Doctor, not too near
This grave no cushion is for thee.
Or art thou one of gallant pride,
A Soldier, and no man of chaff?
Welcome!-but lay thy sword aside,
And lean upon a peasant's staff.
Physician art thou? One, all eyes,
Philosopher! a fingering slave,
One that would peep and botanize
Upon his mother's grave?
Wrapt closely in thy sensual fleece
O turn aside, and take, I pray,
That he below may rest in peace,
That abject thing, thy soul, away!
-A Moralist perchance appears;
Led, Heaven knows how! to this poor sod
And he has neither eyes nor ears;
Himself his world, and his own God;
One to whose smooth-rubbed soul can cling
Nor form, nor feeling, great nor small;
A reasoning, self-sufficing thing,
An intellectual all in all!
Shut close the door; press down the latch;
Sleep in thy intellectual crust;
Nor lose ten tickings of thy watch
Near this unprofitable dust.
|