Poems Chiefly from Manuscript Part 11

An arrow hurtled eer so high, From een a giant's sinewy strength, In Time's untraced eternity Goes but a pigmy length; Nay, whirring from the tortured string, With all its pomp of hurried flight, Tis by the skylark's little wing Outmeasured in its height.

Just so man's boasted strength and power Shall fade before death's lightest stroke, Laid lower than the meanest flower, Whose pride oer-topt the oak; And he who, like a blighting blast, Dispeopled worlds with war's alarms Shall be himself destroyed at last By poor despised worms.

Tyrants in vain their powers secure, And awe slaves' murmurs with a frown, For unawed death at last is sure To sap the babels down.

A stone thrown upward to the sky Will quickly meet the ground agen; So men-G.o.ds of earth's vanity Shall drop at last to men;

And Power and Pomp their all resign, Blood-purchased thrones and banquet halls.

Fate waits to sack Ambition's shrine As bare as prison walls, Where the poor suffering wretch bows down To laws a lawless power hath pa.s.sed; And pride, and power, and king, and clown Shall be Death's slaves at last.

Time, the prime minister of Death!

There's nought can bribe his honest will.

He stops the richest tyrant's breath And lays his mischief still.

Each wicked scheme for power all stops, With grandeurs false and mock display, As eve's shades from high mountain tops Fade with the rest away.

Death levels all things in his march; Nought can resist his mighty strength; The palace proud, triumphal arch, Shall mete its shadow's length.

The rich, the poor, one common bed Shall find in the unhonoured grave, Where weeds shall crown alike the head Of tyrant and of slave.

_The Fallen Elm_

Old elm, that murmured in our chimney top The sweetest anthem autumn ever made And into mellow whispering calms would drop When showers fell on thy many coloured shade And when dark tempests mimic thunder made-- While darkness came as it would strangle light With the black tempest of a winter night That rocked thee like a cradle in thy root-- How did I love to hear the winds upbraid Thy strength without--while all within was mute.

It seasoned comfort to our hearts' desire, We felt thy kind protection like a friend And edged our chairs up closer to the fire, Enjoying comfort that was never penned.

Old favourite tree, thou'st seen time's changes lower, Though change till now did never injure thee; For time beheld thee as her sacred dower And nature claimed thee her domestic tree.

Storms came and shook thee many a weary hour, Yet stedfast to thy home thy roots have been; Summers of thirst parched round thy homely bower Till earth grew iron--still thy leaves were green.

The children sought thee in thy summer shade And made their playhouse rings of stick and stone; The mavis sang and felt himself alone While in thy leaves his early nest was made.

And I did feel his happiness mine own, Nought heeding that our friends.h.i.+p was betrayed, Friend not inanimate--though stocks and stones There are, and many formed of flesh and bones.

Thou owned a language by which hearts are stirred Deeper than by a feeling clothed in word, And speakest now what's known of every tongue, Language of pity and the force of wrong.

What cant a.s.sumes, what hypocrites will dare, Speaks home to truth and shows it what they are.

I see a picture which thy fate displays And learn a lesson from thy destiny; Self-interest saw thee stand in freedom's ways-- So thy old shadow must a tyrant be.

Tnou'st heard the knave, abusing those in power, Bawl freedom loud and then oppress the free; Thou'st sheltered hypocrites in many a shower, That when in power would never shelter thee.

Thou'st heard the knave supply his canting powers With wrong's illusions when he wanted friends; That bawled for shelter when he lived in showers And when clouds vanished made thy shade amends-- With axe at root he felled thee to the ground And barked of freedom--O I hate the sound Time hears its visions speak,--and age sublime Hath made thee a disciple unto time.

--It grows the cant term of enslaving tools To wrong another by the name of right; Thus came enclosure--ruin was its guide, But freedom's cottage soon was thrust aside And workhouse prisons raised upon the site.

Een nature's dwellings far away from men, The common heath, became the spoiler's prey; The rabbit had not where to make his den And labour's only cow was drove away.

No matter--wrong was right and right was wrong, And freedom's bawl was sanction to the song.

--Such was thy ruin, music-making elm; The right of freedom was to injure thine: As thou wert served, so would they overwhelm In freedom's name the little that is mine.

And there are knaves that brawl for better laws And cant of tyranny in stronger power Who glut their vile unsatiated maws And freedom's birthright from the weak devour.

_Sport in the Meadows_

Maytime is to the meadows coming in, And cowslip peeps have gotten eer so big, And water blobs and all their golden kin Crowd round the shallows by the striding brig.

Daisies and b.u.t.tercups and ladysmocks Are all abouten s.h.i.+ning here and there, Nodding about their gold and yellow locks Like morts of folken flocking at a fair.

The sheep and cows are crowding for a share And s.n.a.t.c.h the blossoms in such eager haste That basket-bearing children running there Do think within their hearts they'll get them all And hoot and drive them from their graceless waste As though there wa'n't a cowslip peep to spare.

--For they want some for tea and some for wine And some to maken up a cuckaball To throw across the garland's silken line That reaches oer the street from wall to wall.

--Good gracious me, how merrily they fare: One sees a fairer cowslip than the rest, And off they shout--the foremost bidding fair To get the prize--and earnest half and jest The next one pops her down--and from her hand Her basket falls and out her cowslips all Tumble and litter there--the merry band In laughing friends.h.i.+p round about her fall To helpen gather up the littered flowers That she no loss may mourn. And now the wind In frolic mood among the merry hours Wakens with sudden start and tosses off Some untied bonnet on its dancing wings; Away they follow with a scream and laugh, And aye the youngest ever lags behind, Till on the deep lake's very bank it hings.

They shout and catch it and then off they start And chase for cowslips merry as before, And each one seems so anxious at the heart As they would even get them all and more.

One climbs a molehill for a bunch of may, One stands on tiptoe for a linnet's nest And p.r.i.c.ks her hand and throws her flowers away And runs for plantin leaves to have it drest.

So do they run abouten all the day And teaze the gra.s.s-hid larks from getting rest.

--Scarce give they time in their unruly haste To tie a shoestring that the gra.s.s unties-- And thus they run the meadows' bloom to waste, Till even comes and dulls their phantasies, When one finds losses out to stifle smiles Of silken bonnet-strings--and utters sigh Oer garments renten clambering over stiles.

Yet in the morning fresh afield they hie, Bidding the last day's troubles all goodbye; When red pied cow again their coming hears, And ere they clap the gate she tosses up Her head and hastens from the sport she fears: The old yoe calls her lamb nor cares to stoop To crop a cowslip in their company.

Thus merrily the little noisy troop Along the gra.s.s as rude marauders hie, For ever noisy and for ever gay While keeping in the meadows holiday.

_Death_

The winds and waters are in his command, Held as a courser in the rider's hand.

He lets them loose, they triumph at his will: He checks their course and all is calm and still.

Life's hopes waste all to nothingness away As showers at night wash out the steps of day.

The tyrant, in his lawless power deterred, Bows before death, tame as a broken sword.

One dyeth in his strength and, torn from ease, Groans in death pangs like tempests in the trees.

Another from the bitterness of clay Falls calm as storms drop on an autumn day, With noiseless speed as swift as summer light Death slays and keeps her weapons out of sight.

The tyrants that do act the G.o.d in clay And for earth's glories throw the heavens away, Whose breath in power did like to thunder sear, When anger hurried on the heels of fear, Whose rage planned hosts of murders at a breath-- Here in sound silence sheath their rage in death.

Their feet, that crushed down freedom to its grave And felt the very earth they trod a slave, How quiet here they lie in death's cold arms Without the power to crush the feeble worms Who spite of all the dreadful fears they made Creep there to conquer and are not afraid.

_Autumn_

Syren of sullen moods and fading hues, Yet haply not incapable of joy, Sweet Autumn! I thee hail With welcome all unfeigned;

And oft as morning from her lattice peeps To beckon up the sun, I seek with thee To drink the dewy breath Of fields left fragrant then,

In solitudes, where no frequented paths But what thy own foot makes betray thy home, Stealing obtrusive there To meditate thy end:

By overshadowed ponds, in woody nooks, With ramping sallows lined, and crowding sedge, Which woo the winds to play, And with them dance for joy;

And meadow pools, torn wide by lawless floods, Where water-lilies spread their oily leaves, On which, as wont, the fly Oft battens in the sun;

Where leans the mossy willow half way oer, On which the shepherd crawls astride to throw His angle, clear of weeds That crowd the water's brim;

Or crispy hills, and hollows scant of sward, Where step by step the patient lonely boy Hath cut rude flights of stairs To climb their steepy sides;

Then track along their feet, grown hoa.r.s.e with noise, The crawling brook, that ekes its weary speed, And struggles through the weeds With faint and sullen brawl.

These haunts I long have favoured, more as now With thee thus wandering, moralizing on, Stealing glad thoughts from grief, And happy, though I sigh.

Sweet Vision, with the wild dishevelled hair, And raiment shadowy of each wind's embrace, Fain would I win thine harp To one accordant theme;

Now not inaptly craved, communing thus, Beneath the curdled arms of this stunt oak, While pillowed on the gra.s.s, We fondly ruminate

Oer the disordered scenes of woods and fields, Ploughed lands, thin travelled with half-hungry sheep, Pastures tracked deep with cows, Where small birds seek for seed:

Marking the cow-boy that so merry trills His frequent, unpremeditated song, Wooing the winds to pause, Till echo brawls again;