Part 3

But as thro’ loamy meadows lipping slow Eats the fern-fringëd Luggie; and in spray Leaps the mill-dam, and o’er the rocky flats Spreads in black eddies; so my firstborn song Hastes to the end in heedless vagrancy. O ravishingly sweet the clacking noise Of looms that murmur in our quiet dell! No fairer valley Dyer ever dreamed— Dyer, best river-singer, bard among Ten thousand. Reader, hasten ye and come, And see the Luggie wind her liquid stream Thro’ copsy villages and spiry towns; And see the Bothlin trotting swift of foot From glades of alder, eager to combine Her dimpling harmony with Luggie’s calm Clear music, like the music of the soul. But where you see the meeting, reader, stay, O stay and hear the music of the looms. Thro’ homely rustic bridge with ivy shagged (Which you shall see if ever you do come A summer pilgrim to our valley fair), The Luggie flows with bells of foam-like stars About its surface. A smooth bleaching-green Spreads its soft carpet to the open doors Of simple houses, shining-white. Blue smoke Curls thro’ the breathing air to the tree-tops Thin spreading, and is lost. A humming noise Industrious is heard, the clack of looms, Whereon sit maidens, homely fair, and full Of household simpleness, who sing and weave, And sing and weave thro’ all the easy hours, Each day to-morrow’s counterpart, and smooth Memory the mirror wherein golden Hope, Contented, sees herself. Here dwell an old Couple whose lives have known twice forty years (My mother’s parents), their sage spirits touched With blest anticipation of a home Celestial bright, wherein they may fulfil The life which death discovers. Last winter night I, an accustomed visitant, beheld The dear old pair. He in an easy chair Lay dozing, while beside her noiseless wheel She sat, her brow into her lap declined, And half asleep! Sure sign, my mother said, Of the conclusion of mortality. A boy of ten, their grandson, on the floor Lay stretched in early slumber; all the three Unconscious of my entrance. A strange sight, Fraught with strange lessons for the human soul. In the first portion of her married life, This woman, now, alas! so weary, old, Bore daughters five; of well-beloved sons An equal number. Some of them died young, But six are yet alive, and dwelling all Within a mile of her own house. The flower, The idol of the mother, and her pride, Dear magnet of all hopes, embodiment Of heavenly blessings, was the youngest son, Youngest of all. Me often has she told How not a man could fling the stone with him; That in his shoes he outran racers fleet Barefooted; dancing on the shaven green On summer holidays and autumn eves (As to this day they do) his laugh was clearest, Lightest his step; and he could thrill the hearts Of simple women by a natural grace, And perilous recital of love tales. I cannot tell by what mysterious means, Day-dream, or silver vision of the night, Or sacred show of reason, picturing A smooth ambition and calm happiness For years of weaker age—but suddenly In prime of life there flowered in his soul An inextinguishable love to be A minister of God. When holy schemes Govern the motions of the spirit, ways Are found to compass them. With wary care, Frugality praiseworthy, and the strength Of two strong arms, he in the summer months Hoarded a competence equivalent To all demands, until the session’s end. Whate’er by manual labour he had gained Thro’ the clear summer months in verdant fields, With brooks of silver laced, and cool’d with winds, Was spent in winter in the smoky town. But when, his annual course of study past, He with his presence blessed his father’s house, With what a sacred sanctity of hope Eager his mother dreamed, or garrulous Spake of him everywhere—his foreign ways, And midnight porings o’er _uncanny_ books. His father, with a stern delight suffused, Grew a proud man of some importance now In his own eyes; for who in all the vale Had e’er a son so noble and so learned, So worthy as his own? So time wore on: but when three years complete Had perfected their separate destinies, A change stole o’er the current of their lives, As a cloud-shadow glooms the crystal stream. Their son came home, but with his coming came Sorrow. A hue too beautifully fair Brighten’d his cheek, as sunlight tints a cloud. His face had caught a trick of joy more sad Than visible grief; and all the subtle frame Of human life, so wonderfully wrought, A mystery of mechanism, was wearing In sore uneasy manner to the grave. What need to tell what every heart must know In sympathy prophetical? Long time, A varied year in seasons four complete (For the white snowdrop o’er my mother’s well Twice oped its whitest leaves among the green), He lay consuming. It must needs have been A weary trial to the thinking soul, Thus with a consciousness of coming death, The grim Attenuation! evermore Nearing insatiate. At her spinning-wheel His mother sat; and when his voice grew faint, A simple whistle by his pillow lay, And at its sound she entered patient, sad, Her soothing love to minister, her hope To nourish to its fading. But his breath Grew weaker ever; and his dry pale lips Closing upon the little instrument, Could not produce a faintly audible note! A little bell, the plaything of a child, Now at his bedside hung, and its clear tones Tinkled the weary summons. Thus his time Narrowed to a completion, and his soul, Immortal in its nature, thro’ his eyes Yearning, beheld the majesty of Him Great in His mystery of godliness, Fulfiller of the dim Apocalypse! Twelve years have passed since then, and he is now A happy memory in the hearts of those Who knew him; for to know him was to love. And oft I deem it better, as the fates, Or God, whose will is fate, have proven it; For had he lived and fallen (as who of us Doth perfectly? and let him that is proud Take heed lest he do fall) he would have been A sadness to them in their aged hours. But now he is an honour and delight; A treasure of the memory; a joy Unutterable: by the lone fireside They never tire to speak his praise, and say How, if he had been spared, he would have been So great, and good, and noble as (they say) The country knows; although I know full well That not a man in all the parish round Speaks of him ever; he is now forgot, And this his natal valley knows him not.— And this his natal valley knows him not? The well-belovëd, nothing?—the fair face And pliant limbs, poor indistinctive dust? The body, blood, and network of the brain Crumbled as a clod crumbles! Is this all? A turf, a date, an epitaph, and then Oblivion, and profound nonentity! And thus his natal valley knows him not. Trees murmur to the passing wind, streams flow, Flowers shine with dewdrops in the shady glens, All unintelligent creation smiles In loving-kindness; but, like a light dream Of morning, man arises in fair show, Like the hued rainbow from incumbent gloom Elicited, he shines against the sun— A momentary glory. Not a voice Remains to whisper of his whereabouts: The palpable body in its mother’s breast Dissolves, and every feature of the face Is lost in feculent changes. O black earth! Wrap from bare eyes the slow decaying form, The beauty rotting from the living hair, The body made incapable thro’ sin God’s Spirit to contain. Earth, wrap it close Till the heavens vibrate to the trump of doom!

This is not all: for the invisible soul Betrays the soft desire, the quenchless wish, To live a purer life, more proximate To the prime Fountain of all life. The power Of vivid fancy and the boundless scenes (High coloured with the colouring of Heaven), Creations of imagination, tell The mortal yearnings of immortal souls! Now, while around me in blind labour winds Howl, and the rain-drops lash the streaming pane; Now, while the pine-glen on the mountain side Roars in its wrestling with the sightless foe, And the black tarn grows hoary with the storm;— Amid the external elemental war, My soul with calm comportment—more becalmed By the wild tempest furious without— Sits in her sacred cell, and ruminates On Death, severe discloser of new life. When the well-known and once embraceable form Is but a handful of white dust, the soul Grows in divine dilation, nearer God. Therefore grieve not, my heart, that unsustained His memory died among us, that no more, While yet the grass is hoary and the dawn Lingers, he shyly thro’ untrodden fields Brushes his early path: that he no more Beneath the beech, in lassitude outstretched, Ponders the holy strains of Israel’s King; For in translated glory, and new clothed With Incorruptible, he purer air Breathes in a fairer valley. There no storm Maddens as now; no flux, and no opaque, But all is calm, and permanent, and clear, God’s glory and the Lamb illumine all!

Now ends this song—not for self-honour sung, But in the Luggie’s service. It hath been A crownëd vision and a silver dream, That I should touch this valley with renown Eternal, make the fretting waters gleam In light above the common light of earth. The shoreless air of heaven is purer here, The golden beams more keenly crystalline, The skies more deeply sapphired. For to me, About these emerald fields and lawny hills, There linger glories which you cannot see, And influences which you cannot feel, Delight and incommunicable woe! My home is here; and like a patient star, Shining between untroubled Paradise And my own soul, a mother shines therein, The sole perfection of true womanhood: A father—with the wisdom which pertains To grey experience, and that stern delight In naked truth, and reason which belongs To the intense reflective mind—hath told His fifty winters here. And all the hopes Which gild the present; all the sad regrets Which dull the past, are present to my soul In the external forms and colourings Of this dear valley. Therefore do I yearn To make its stream flow in undying verse, Low-singing thro’ the labyrinthine dell!

And let forgiving charity preclude Harsh judgments from the singer: not that he Fearfully would forestal the righteous word, Blameworthy, spoken in kindness, and that truth Which sanctions condemnation. Yet, dear Lord, A youthful flattering of the spirit, touched With a desire unquenchable, displays My hope’s delirium. Oh! if the dream Fade into nothing, into worse than nought, Blackness of darkness like the golden zones Of an autumnal sunset, and the night Of unfulfilled ambition closes round My destiny, think what an awful hell O’erwhelms the conquer’d soul! Therefore, O men Who guard with jealousy and loving care The honour of our sacred literature, Read with a kindness born of trustful hope, Forgiving rambling schoolboy thoughts, too plain To utter with a spasm, or clothe in cold Mosaic fretwork of well-pleasing words, Forgiving youth’s vagaries, want of skill, And blind devotional passion for my home!

[A] Psalm cxlvii. 16-18.

[B] I am almost certain this name of the bird is merely local, but I know no other.—[Mr. Robt. Gray, a well-known authority, says the bird alluded to is the Missel-Thrush.—ED.]

In the Shadows.

_A POEM IN SONNETS._

Induction.

Enter, scared mortal! and in awe behold The chancel of a dying poet’s mind, Hung round, ah! not adorned, with pictures bold And quaint, but roughly touched for the refined. The chancel not the charnel house! For I To God have raised a shrine immaculate Therein, whereon His name to glorify, And daily mercies meekly celebrate. So in, scared breather! here no hint of death— Skull or cross-bones suggesting sceptic fear; Yea rather calmer beauty, purer breath Inhaled from a diviner atmosphere.

I.

If it must be; if it must be, O God! That I die young, and make no further moans; That, underneath the unrespective sod, In unescutcheoned privacy, my bones Shall crumble soon,—then give me strength to bear The last convulsive throe of too sweet breath! I tremble from the edge of life, to dare The dark and fatal leap, having no faith, No glorious yearning for the Apocalypse; But, like a child that in the night-time cries For light, I cry; forgetting the eclipse Of knowledge and our human destinies. O peevish and uncertain soul! obey The law of life in patience till the Day.

II.

“Whom the gods love die young.” The thought is old; And yet it soothed the sweet Athenian mind. I take it with all pleasure, overbold, Perhaps, yet to its virtue much inclined By an inherent love for what is fair. This is the utter poetry of woe— That the bright-flashing gods should cure despair By love, and make youth precious here below. I die, being young; and, dying, could become A pagan, with the tender Grecian trust. Let death, the fell anatomy, benumb The hand that writes, and fill my mouth with dust— Chant no funereal theme, but, with a choral Hymn, O ye mourners! hail immortal youth auroral!

III.

With the tear-worthy four, consumption killed In youthful prime, before the nebulous mind Had its symmetric shapeliness defined, Had its transcendent destiny fulfilled.— May future ages grant me gracious room, With Pollok, in the voiceless solitude Finding his holiest rapture, happiest mood; Poor White for ever poring o’er the tomb; With Keats, whose lucid fancy mounting far Saw heaven as an intenser, a more keen Redintegration of the Beauty seen And felt by all the breathers on this star; With gentle Bruce, flinging melodious blame Upon the Future for an uncompleted name.

IV.

Oh many a time with Ovid have I borne My father’s vain, yet well-meant reprimand, To leave the sweet-air’d, clover-purpled land Of rhyme—its Lares loftily forlorn, With all their pure humanities unworn— To batten on the bare Theologies! To quench a glory lighted at the skies, Fed on one essence with the silver morn, Were of all blasphemies the most insane. So deeplier given to the delicious spell I clung to thee, heart-soothing Poesy! Now on a sick-bed rack’d with arrowy pain I lift white hands of gratitude, and cry, Spirit of God in Milton! was it well?

V.

Last night, on coughing slightly with sharp pain, There came arterial blood, and with a sigh Of absolute grief I cried in bitter vein, That drop is my death-warrant: I must die. Poor meagre life is mine, meagre and poor! Rather a piece of childhood thrown away; An adumbration faint; the overture To stifled music; year that ends in May; The sweet beginning of a tale unknown; A dream unspoken; promise unfulfilled; A morning with no noon, a rose unblown— All its deep rich vermilion crushed and killed I’ th’ bud by frost:—Thus in false fear I cried, Forgetting that to abolish death Christ died.

VI.

Sweetly, my mother! Go not yet away— I have not told my story. Oh, not yet, With the fair past before me, can I lay My cheek upon the pillow to forget. O sweet, fair past, my twenty years of youth Thus thrown away, not fashioning a man; But fashioning a memory, forsooth! More feminine than follower of Pan. O God! let me not die for years and more! Fulfil Thyself; and I will live then surely Longer than a mere childhood. Now heart-sore, Weary, with being weary—weary, purely. In dying, mother, I can find no pleasure Except in being near thee without measure.

VII.

Hew Atlas for my monument; upraise A pyramid for my tomb, that, undestroyed By rank, oblivion, and the hungry void, My name shall echo through prospective days. O careless conqueror! cold, abysmal grave! Is it not sad—is it not sad, my heart— To smother young ambition, and depart Unhonoured and unwilling, like death’s slave? No rare immortal remnant of my thought Embalms my life; no poem, firmly reared Against the shock of time, ignobly feared— But all my life’s progression come to nought. Hew Atlas! build a pyramid in a plain! Oh, cool the fever burning in my brain!

VIII.

From this entangling labyrinthine maze Of doctrine, creed, and theory; from vague Vain speculations; the detested plague Of spiritual pride, and vile affrays Sectarian, good Lord, deliver me! Nature! thy placid monitory glory Shines uninterrogated, while the story Goes round of this and that theology, This creed, and that, till patience close the list. Once more on Carronben’s wind-shrilling height To sit in sovereign solitude, and quite Forget the hollow world—a pantheist Beyond Bonaventura! This were cheer Passing the tedious tale of shallow pulpiteer.

IX.

A vale of tears, a wilderness of woe, A sad unmeaning mystery of strife; Reason with Passion strives, and Feeling ever Battles with Conscience, clear eyed arbiter. Thus spake I in sad mood not long ago, To my dear father, of this human life, Its jars and phantasies. Soft answered he, With soul of love strong as a mountain river: We make ourselves—Son, you are what you are Neither by fate nor providence nor cause External: all unformed humanity Waiteth the stamp of individual laws; And as you love and act, the plastic spirit Doth the impression evermore inherit.

X.

Last Autumn we were four, and travelled far With Phœbe in her golden plenilune, O’er stubble-fields where sheaves of harvest boon Stood slanted. Many a clear and stedfast star Twinkled its radiance thro’ crisp-leaved beeches, Over the farm to which, with snatches rare Of ancient ballads, songs, and saucy speeches, He hurried, happy mad. Then each had there A dove-eyed sister pining for him, four Fair ladies legacied with loveliness, Chaste as a group of stars, or lilies blown In rural nunnery. O God! Thy sore Strange ways expound. Two to the grave have gone Without apparent reason more or less.

XI.

Now, while the long-delaying ash assumes The delicate April green, and, loud and clear, Through the cool, yellow, mellow twilight glooms, The thrush’s song enchants the captive ear; Now, while a shower is pleasant in the falling, Stirring the still perfume that wakes around; Now, that doves mourn, and from the distance calling, The cuckoo answers, with a sovereign sound,— Come, with thy native heart, O true and tried! But leave all books; for what with converse high, Flavoured with Attic wit, the time shall glide On smoothly, as a river floweth by, Or as on stately pinion, through the grey Evening, the culver cuts his liquid way.

XII.

Why are all fair things at their death the fairest: Beauty the beautifullest in decay? Why doth rich sunset clothe each closing day With ever-new apparelling the rarest? Why are the sweetest melodies all born Of pain and sorrow? Mourneth not the dove, In the green forest gloom, an absent love? Leaning her breast against that cruel thorn, Doth not the nightingale, poor bird, complain And integrate her uncontrollable woe To such perfection, that to hear is pain? Thus, Sorrow and Death—alone realities— Sweeten their ministration, and bestow On troublous life a relish of the skies!

XIII.

And, well-belovëd, is this all, this all? Gone, like a vapour which the potent morn Kills, and in killing glorifies! I call Through the lone night for thee, my dear first-born Soul-fellow! but my heart vibrates in vain. Ah! well I know, and often fancy forms The weather-blown churchyard where thou art lain— The churchyard whistling to the frequent storms. But down the valley, by the river side, Huge walnut-trees—bronze-foliaged, motionless As leaves of metal—in their shadows hide Warm nests, low music, and true tenderness. But thou, betrothed! art far from me, from me. O heart! be merciful—I loved him utterly.

XIV.

Father! when I have passed, with deathly swoon, Into the ghost-world, immaterial, dim, O may nor time nor circumstance dislimn My image from thy memory, as noon Steals from the fainting bloom the cooling dew! Like flower, itself completing bud and bell, In lonely thicket, be thy sorrow true, And in expression secret. Worse than hell To see the grave hypocrisy—to hear The crocodilian sighs of summer friends Outraging grief’s assuasive, holy ends! But thou art faithful, father, and sincere; And in thy brain the love of me shall dwell Like the memorial music in the curved sea-shell.

XV.

From my sick-bed gazing upon the west, Where all the bright effulgencies of day Lay steeped in sunless vapours, raw and gray,— Herein (methought) is mournfully exprest The end of false ambitions, sullen doom Of my brave hopes, Promethean desires: Barren and perfumeless, my name expires Like summer-day setting in joyless gloom. Yet faint I not in sceptical dismay, Upheld by the belief that all pure thought Is deathless, perfect: that the truths out-wrought By the laborious mind cannot decay, Being evolutions of that Sovereign Mind Akin to man’s; yet orbed, exhaustless, undefined.

XVI.

The daisy-flower is to the summer sweet, Though utterly unknown it live and die; The spheral harmony were incomplete Did the dew’d laverock mount no more the sky, Because her music’s linkëd sorcery Bewitched no mortal heart to heavenly mood. This is the law of nature, that the deed Should dedicate its excellence to God, And in so doing find sufficient meed. Then why should I make these heart-burning cries, In sickly rhyme with morbid feeling rife, For fame and temporal felicities? Forgetting that in holy labour lies The scholarship severe of human life.

XVII.

O God, it is a terrible thing to die Into the inextinguishable life; To leave this known world with a feeble cry, All its poor jarring and ignoble strife. O that some shadowy spectre would disclose The Future, and the soul’s confineless hunger Satisfy with some knowledge of repose! For here the lust of avarice waxeth stronger, Making life hateful; youth alone is true, Full of a glorious self-forgetfulness: Better to die inhabiting the new Kingdom of faith and promise, and confess, Even in the agony and last eclipse, Some revelation of the Apocalypse!

XVIII.