Poems Chiefly from Manuscript Part 15

And still they bloom as on the day They first crowned wilderness and rock, When Abel haply wreathed with may The firstlings of his little flock, And Eve might from the matted thorn To deck her lone and lovely brow Reach that same rose that heedless scorn Misnames as the dog rosey now.

Give me no high-flown fangled things, No haughty pomp in marching chime, Where muses play on golden strings And splendour pa.s.ses for sublime, Where cities stretch as far as fame And fancy's straining eye can go, And piled until the sky for shame Is stooping far away below.

I love the verse that mild and bland Breathes of green fields and open sky, I love the muse that in her hand Bears flowers of native poesy; Who walks nor skips the pasture brook In scorn, but by the drinking horse Leans oer its little brig to look How far the sallows lean across,

And feels a rapture in her breast Upon their root-fringed grains to mark A hermit morehen's sedgy nest Just like a naiad's summer bark.

She counts the eggs she cannot reach Admires the spot and loves it well, And yearns, so nature's lessons teach, Amid such neighbourhoods to dwell.

I love the muse who sits her down Upon the molehill's little lap, Who feels no fear to stain her gown And pauses by the hedgerow gap; Not with that affectation, praise Of song, to sing and never see A field flower grown in all her days Or een a forest's aged tree.

Een here my simple feelings nurse A love for every simple weed, And een this little shepherd's purse Grieves me to cut it up; indeed I feel at times a love and joy For every weed and every thing, A feeling kindred from a boy, A feeling brought with every Spring.

And why? this shepherd's purse that grows In this strange spot, in days gone bye Grew in the little garden rows Of my old home now left; and I Feel what I never felt before, This weed an ancient neighbour here, And though I own the spot no more Its every trifle makes it dear.

The ivy at the parlour end, The woodbine at the garden gate, Are all and each affection's friend That render parting desolate.

But times will change and friends must part And nature still can make amends; Their memory lingers round the heart Like life whose essence is its friends.

Time looks on pomp with vengeful mood Or killing apathy's disdain; So where old marble cities stood Poor persecuted weeds remain.

She feels a love for little things That very few can feel beside, And still the gra.s.s eternal springs Where castles stood and grandeur died.

_Remembrances_

Summer's pleasures they are gone like to visions every one, And the cloudy days of autumn and of winter cometh on.

I tried to call them back, but unbidden they are gone Far away from heart and eye and forever far away.

Dear heart, and can it be that such raptures meet decay?

I thought them all eternal when by Langley Bush I lay, I thought them joys eternal when I used to shout and play On its bank at "clink and bandy," "chock" and "taw" and "ducking stone,"

Where silence sitteth now on the wild heath as her own Like a ruin of the past all alone.

When I used to lie and sing by old Eastwell's boiling spring, When I used to tie the willow boughs together for a swing, And fish with crooked pins and thread and never catch a thing, With heart just like a feather, now as heavy as a stone; When beneath old Lea Close oak I the bottom branches broke To make our harvest cart like so many working folk, And then to cut a straw at the brook to have a soak.

O I never dreamed of parting or that trouble had a sting, Or that pleasures like a flock of birds would ever take to wing, Leaving nothing but a little naked spring.

When jumping time away on old Crossberry Way, And eating awes like sugarplums ere they had lost the may, And skipping like a leveret before the peep of day On the roly poly up and downs of pleasant Swordy Well, When in Round Oak's narrow lane as the south got black again We sought the hollow ash that was shelter from the rain, With our pockets full of peas we had stolen from the grain; How delicious was the dinner time on such a showery day!

O words are poor receipts for what time hath stole away, The ancient pulpit trees and the play.

When for school oer Little Field with its brook and wooden brig, Where I swaggered like a man though I was not half so big, While I held my little plough though twas but a willow twig, And drove my team along made of nothing but a name, "Gee hep" and "hoit" and "woi"--O I never call to mind These pleasant names of places but I leave a sigh behind, While I see little mouldiwarps hang sweeing to the wind On the only aged willow that in all the field remains, And nature hides her face while they're sweeing in their chains And in a silent murmuring complains.

Here was commons for their hills, where they seek for freedom still, Though every common's gone and though traps are set to kill The little homeless miners--O it turns my bosom chill When I think of old Sneap Green, Puddock's Nook and Hilly Snow, Where bramble bushes grew and the daisy gemmed in dew And the hills of silken gra.s.s like to cus.h.i.+ons to the view, Where we threw the pismire crumbs when we'd nothing else to do, All levelled like a desert by the never weary plough, All banished like the sun where that cloud is pa.s.sing now And settled here for ever on its brow.

O I never thought that joys would run away from boys, Or that boys would change their minds and forsake such summer joys; But alack I never dreamed that the world had other toys To petrify first feelings like the fable into stone, Till I found the pleasure past and a winter come at last, Then the fields were sudden bare and the sky got overcast And boyhood's pleasing haunt like a blossom in the blast Was shrivelled to a withered weed and trampled down and done, Till vanished was the morning spring and set the summer sun And winter fought her battle strife and won.

By Langley Bush I roam, but the bush hath left its hill, On Cowper Green I stray, tis a desert strange and chill, And the spreading Lea Close oak, ere decay had penned its will, To the axe of the spoiler and self-interest fell a prey, And Crossberry Way and old Round Oak's narrow lane With its hollow trees like pulpits I shall never see again, Enclosure like a Buonaparte let not a thing remain, It levelled every bush and tree and levelled every hill And hung the moles for traitors--though the brook is running still It runs a sicker brook, cold and chill.

O had I known as then joy had left the paths of men, I had watched her night and day, be sure, and never slept agen, And when she turned to go, O I'd caught her mantle then, And wooed her like a lover by my lonely side to stay; Ay, knelt and wors.h.i.+pped on, as love in beauty's bower, And clung upon her smiles as a bee upon a flower, And gave her heart my posies, all cropt in a sunny hour, As keepsakes and pledges all to never fade away; But love never heeded to treasure up the may, So it went the common road to decay.

_The Cottager_

True as the church clock hand the hour pursues He plods about his toils and reads the news, And at the blacksmith's shop his hour will stand To talk of "Lunun" as a foreign land.

For from his cottage door in peace or strife He neer went fifty miles in all his life.

His knowledge with old notions still combined Is twenty years behind the march of mind.

He views new knowledge with suspicious eyes And thinks it blasphemy to be so wise.

On steam's almighty tales he wondering looks As witchcraft gleaned from old blackletter books.

Life gave him comfort but denied him wealth, He toils in quiet and enjoys his health, He smokes a pipe at night and drinks his beer And runs no scores on tavern screens to clear.

He goes to market all the year about And keeps one hour and never stays it out.

Een at St. Thomas tide old Rover's bark Hails Dapple's trot an hour before it's dark.

He is a simple-worded plain old man Whose good intents take errors in their plan.

Oft sentimental and with saddened vein He looks on trifles and bemoans their pain, And thinks the angler mad, and loudly storms With emphasis of speech oer murdered worms.

And hunters cruel--pleading with sad care Pity's pet.i.tion for the fox and hare, Yet feels self-satisfaction in his woes For war's crushed myriads of his slaughtered foes.

He is right scrupulous in one pretext And wholesale errors swallows in the next.

He deems it sin to sing, yet not to say A song--a mighty difference in his way.

And many a moving tale in antique rhymes He has for Christmas and such merry times, When "Chevy Chase," his masterpiece of song, Is said so earnest none can think it long.

Twas the old vicar's way who should be right, For the late vicar was his heart's delight, And while at church he often shakes his head To think what sermons the old vicar made, Downright and orthodox that all the land Who had their ears to hear might understand, But now such mighty learning meets his ears He thinks it Greek or Latin which he hears, Yet church receives him every sabbath day And rain or snow he never keeps away.

All words of reverence still his heart reveres, Low bows his head when Jesus meets his ears, And still he thinks it blasphemy as well Such names without a capital to spell.

In an old corner cupboard by the wall His books are laid, though good, in number small, His Bible first in place; from worth and age Whose grandsire's name adorns the t.i.tle page, And blank leaves once, now filled with kindred claims, Display a world's epitome of names.

Parents and children and grandchildren all Memory's affections in the lists recall.

And prayer-book next, much worn though strongly bound, Proves him a churchman orthodox and sound.

The "Pilgrim's Progress" and the "Death of Abel"

Are seldom missing from his Sunday table, And prime old Tusser in his homely trim, The first of bards in all the world with him, And only poet which his leisure knows; Verse deals in fancy, so he sticks to prose.

These are the books he reads and reads again And weekly hunts the almanacks for rain.

Here and no further learning's channels ran; Still, neighbours prize him as the learned man.

His cottage is a humble place of rest With one spare room to welcome every guest, And that tall poplar pointing to the sky His own hand planted when an idle boy, It shades his chimney while the singing wind Hums songs of shelter to his happy mind.

Within his cot the largest ears of corn He ever found his picture frames adorn: Brave Granby's head, De Grosse's grand defeat; He rubs his hands and shows how Rodney beat.

And from the rafters upon strings depend Beanstalks beset with pods from end to end, Whose numbers without counting may be seen Wrote on the almanack behind the screen.

Around the corner up on worsted strung Pooties in wreaths above the cupboard hung.

Memory at trifling incidents awakes And there he keeps them for his children's sakes, Who when as boys searched every sedgy lane, Traced every wood and shattered clothes again, Roaming about on rapture's easy wing To hunt those very pooty sh.e.l.ls in spring.

And thus he lives too happy to be poor While strife neer pauses at so mean a door.

Low in the sheltered valley stands his cot, He hears the mountain storm and feels it not; Winter and spring, toil ceasing ere tis dark, Rests with the lamb and rises with the lark, Content his helpmate to the day's employ And care neer comes to steal a single joy.

Time, scarcely noticed, turns his hair to grey, Yet leaves him happy as a child at play.

_Insects_

These tiny loiterers on the barley's beard, And happy units of a numerous herd Of playfellows, the laughing Summer brings, Mocking the suns.h.i.+ne in their glittering wings, How merrily they creep, and run, and fly!

No kin they bear to labour's drudgery, Smoothing the velvet of the pale hedge-rose; And where they fly for dinner no one knows-- The dew-drops feed them not--they love the s.h.i.+ne Of noon, whose sun may bring them golden wine.

All day they're playing in their Sunday dress-- Till night goes sleep, and they can do no less; Then, to the heath bell's silken hood they fly, And like to princes in their slumbers lie, Secure from night, and dropping dews, and all, In silken beds and roomy painted hall.

So merrily they spend their summer day, Now in the cornfields, now the new-mown hay.

One almost fancies that such happy things, With coloured hoods and richly burnished wings, Are fairy folk, in splendid masquerade Disguised, as if of mortal folk afraid, Keeping their merry pranks a mystery still, Lest glaring day should do their secrets ill.

_Sudden Shower_

Black grows the southern sky, betokening rain, And humming hive-bees homeward hurry bye: They feel the change; so let us shun the grain, And take the broad road while our feet are dry.

Ay, there some dropples moistened on my face, And pattered on my hat--tis coming nigh!

Let's look about, and find a sheltering place.

The little things around, like you and I, Are hurrying through the gra.s.s to shun the shower.

Here stoops an ash-tree--hark! the wind gets high, But never mind; this ivy, for an hour, Rain as it may, will keep us dryly here: That little wren knows well his sheltering bower, Nor leaves his dry house though we come so near.